Geeky Vampire Developers
by peregrin01
Summary: That, which has no life, can't regret losing it... And can manage far more work than before!
1. Eclipse

Eclipse

Edward stared in front of him. What was in front of him? Eclipse.

"Please, Edward, talk to me," he heard Bella's pleading voice. He gave no answer.

"What's the problem? Are you unable to commit?" she wailed.

Edward had enough and replied, "No! I can commit any time I want. I just need more time!"

Bella fell silent for a moment before speaking again, "How much time?"

Edward was loosing his patience quickly.

"I don't know," he snapped. "Ten minutes? Maybe five if you shut up!"

Bella sat down on a chair with a huff but remained silent this time. Edward returned his gaze towards the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment) on his monitor. Minutes passed as he edited the C code in the opened files. Yes, good old pure C. While the whole project was mostly written in C++, the particular static library that Edward was working on demanded high performance so he had to forgo certain luxuries of C++ and STL (standard template library) not to mention that the low-level hacks that C enabled came handy as well (contrary to popular belief, C is not a subset of C++)

Bella looked around the basement they were in with absent eyes in the meantime. Tables, chairs, white-boards, and, of course, computers, cables, and other things. A true paradise for any IT geek.

"There!" bellowed Edward triumphantly and compiled his code. The compilation was still running but he went ahead and committed his changes to the CVS server. By the way, the said server was only a few meters away from him.

"Try it now," he added.

Bella went to a table where there were two computers. One was running Linux and the other... something else (ehm, ehm). She updated and built the project, then she ran a benchmark. A landscape. Trees and a poorly modeled village below, clouds all around, more weather effects above. Bella didn't look at any part of the flight scene, she had eyes only for the FPS indicator in a corner of the screen.

When the scene disappeared on both screens, she opened logs with statistics. After a quick study of them, she started rejoicing and dancing around. A huge smile on Edward's face indicated that the shared her sentiment. This joy didn't last long though. In the heat of her exuberance, Bella hugged Edward. He stiffened and cringed away. Bella realized what she had done and stepped away from him. Both of them turned to their computers, resumed their work and pretended that the whole incident didn't happen.

* * *

There were six of them - Bella, Edward, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett. Seven, if you counted professor Carlisle Cullen. Eight, if you counted his wife Esme. Taking that into consideration, it's better to count just the six. Six true geeks who had no life, no families, no partners, no friends, and nothing to be truly proud of but their intellects. True, one could say that all of them were friends with each other, that their project was their life, and that Carlisle and Esme were their unofficial uncle and aunt but they preferred not to think about it.

The main concern of this group of geeks was the project they were working on - they were creating a computer game. One that was both unusual (so it would draw in new customers) but also mainstream enough (so it wouldn't repel anybody).

Bella was an expert on math, theoretical computer science, formal models, and other similar things. She was currently doing PHD under Carlisle who taught various subjects regarding digital graphics and his research group worked on projects for medical purposes (e.g. software for visualization of CT data). The computer game they were creating had originally started as a theoretical paper written by Bella about a new concept for 3D engines for big open worlds with support for far visibility, detailed environment, and fast movement. Apart from that, she had one more idea which she wanted to put in the game but it didn't seem like there was going to be time for that.

Edward was Bella's opposite, from a certain point of view. Where Bella was theoretical, Edward was practical. He was their main software engineer. Unlike Bella, he had no desire for academical career and instead of doing PHD, he worked in a studio developing computer games. However, he felt that his creativity wasn't used enough in his work and he always dreamed of creating a game of his own. All in all, there wasn't anything special about him - a classic computer geek.

Emmett was their main script programmer. He wasn't working on the engine itself, he was merely using its embedded environment. Edward liked him because he had quite a good idea about what was laying underneath the abstraction layer provided for him. As a result, he didn't go running to Edward every time something strange happened. No, he made sure to analyse the problem first and determine whether it was really Edward's fault before he filled anything in their Bugzilla.

Alice and Rose were responsible for graphical 2D and 3D data. Rose was creating 3D models while Alice took care of textures and overall graphical design. They had both majored in digital art. Alice worked in a web-design studio while Rose worked in an interior design company. Luckily, Rose was smart enough to understand how different modeling for video games was. As for Alice, there was a doubt whether she was a true geek or whether she was an artist. It was sure that she had quite a taste and talent which didn't make her quite as geeky as the others would like. Still, she was quite weird and the others agreed that such a quality was certainly redeeming.

If Bella was a spiritual mother of the game's engine, Jasper was a spiritual father of the game itself. His path to the project had been rather indirect. He studied computer sciences once but he found out that his brain wasn't mathematical enough. He applied to another school during his second year and got accepted. Strangely enough, when the subjects he didn't like ceased to matter, he found all the other ones far more enjoyable. Still, he decided to major in literature and minor in history. Both subjects were his favorites but his childhood dream was to write books or screenplays. More generally, he wanted to tell stories. He started to teach at a high school after he got his master degree but that was only to make a living. In his free time, he pursued his true career - or at least attempted to. All his books and screenplays were rejected and he managed to get only a few short stories published in various fantasy and sci-fi magazines. Jasper finally realized that he needed another medium - a digital one.

The way they had assembled would make for a story of its own. Some of them knew each other before (Edward and Emmett, Alice and Rose) but most of them didn't. It was only thanks to Carlisle and Esme (who was in house design just like Rose) that their team was ever founded. Carlisle was their guru and their unofficial über-leader. Of course, there was no way he could actually contribute to the project itself because everything he knew about computers was terribly obsolete. And yet, there was something else which he was doing for them, something that no other member of the team was able to do - he provided them with his contacts and even spoke on their behalf. Sadly, they couldn't consider him as one of them - he was married after all. That effectively disqualified him as a geek.

As for the PC game they were developing, none of them could actually remember how had they come up with its concept. They were brainstorming one evening when the idea clicked into place for all of them. They all had read Tolkien and liked fantasy so it was no surprise that their idea belonged to this genre.

A dragon. Their game put a player in a role of a dragon. Sure, there were other PC games which featured dragons or even enabled players to control them. However, Bella and the others intended to create a "simulator" of a dragon with realistic flight mechanics and a full experience of being in dragon's scales, so to speak. Bella also liked the fact that having this kind of a protagonist helped to make certain issues she had with RPG games less noticeable.

Their plan was to start from a moment of hatching. They weren't sure about the plot yet but it was understood that the player needed to start alone, small, weak, vulnerable, and confused. The position of the dragon needed to be similar to that of a newborn child without a mother. Perhaps some crazy flight (with no actual flying) through a dark forest at night, where failure to avoid wolves meant an instant death.

How exactly was the egg going to get there was another question, one of many. Did the dragons in their world have two genders like humans or only one? Should their dragon have six limbs (legs, front limbs, wings) or only four (legs, wings)? The former didn't look very aerodynamic and they didn't like it for some reason. However, the latter created a danger of making a dragon look like a bat and many nerds would surely say that such a creature isn't actually a dragon. Also, they wished their dragon to have motor abilities of human hands, at least to some extent.

Another problem to contemplate was how to best tackle certain issues concerning dragons pointed out by nerds. How do they breath fire (or other stuff)? How can they keep themselves airborne when they are basically heavy dinosaurs with wings?

The fire question seemed simple at first. There were substances which were extremely flammable when mixed with air. So the basic idea was for a dragon to have some kind of a liquid in its belly. The dragon breathes the chemical out (mixes it with air from his lungs) and ignites it by a spark created by his mineral-coated teeth.

A much harder question concerned flight capability of dragons. Bella and the others were the sort of people who were unable to suspend their disbelief when the matter was obviously illogical and truth to be told, this was something which spoiled their enthusiasm for dragons. Birds, bats, pterodactyls, and other flying creatures were able to fly because their bodies had bird-like proportions. Dragons didn't posses bird-like proportions.

Rosalie proposed during one of their brainstorming sessions to simply reshape their dragon. Smaller lower body, enhanced chest muscles, smaller head and neck, gigantic wings, hollow bones, etc. Emmett asked sarcastically whether she wanted to remove the scales. It was clear that it wasn't a viable coarse of action. They didn't want to create a simulator of an overgrown sparrow, they wanted a dragon. A robust, majestic dragon capable of getting hit by several ballistae and shrugging it off. They wanted the players to look at the protagonist and feel like people felt at the end of Jurassic Park when a Tyrannosaur Rex completely dominated the projection screen after fighting two Velociraptors. Unfortunately, a typical dragon was only a little more aerodynamic. Slight modeling changes could increase potential speed of a dragon somewhat but nothing could actually help it to get off the ground.

"What if magic kept them in the air?" proposed Alice afterwards. "Their wings would serve only as a means of propellant. They would be like airships."

Everybody groaned. Alice was the only one of them who could possibly propose such a thing. It's magic (a wizard did it). Don't dwell on it, dear player, we are just a bunch of morons who couldn't come up with a rational explanation. A dragon is a big fat balloon filled with magic and that keeps it from falling down like a brick.

Edward, who had consumed several slices of pizza and half a can of beer, stared at the last slice still in the box and thought about two things in the silence that followed. One was whether he should dare to try to eat that last slice as well. The other was their current predicament and whether they couldn't somehow use Rosalie's and Alice's ideas and build on them. They couldn't reshape their dragon into a bird and they couldn't explain its flight capability with magic. Alas, he could understand Rosalie's desire for their dragon to be fast and agile. They wanted any flying in their game to be an actual flight simulation. As for Alice's suggestion, did they really want dragons in their game to be entirely mundane? Yes, they were going to have a spell-casting ability. Probably. Then again, any wizard was able to do that. Maybe. Edward believed that there should be more to dragons. Something intangible, incomprehensible, and alien. Truly supernatural, not just fantastic.

While he thought, Bella grabbed the last piece of pizza and started to eat it. For some reason, it triggered some random synapses in Edward's brain and he remembered two different things.

One was a book he had read as a child. It was about "adventures" (more like conversations) of three people. A normal gentleman with an inquisitive mind, a professor of astrophysics, and the professor's daughter who became the gentleman's wife later on. The author presented the readers with introductions to all sorts of obscure laws of our universe, from quantum physics and sub-elementary particles to relativity, cosmology, black-holes, and wormholes. How could he possibly remember such a thing because of Bella was difficult. Maybe because she reminded him of the professor's daughter (with Carlisle being the professor)? Luckily, it didn't occur to him that he himself was the gentleman with inquisitive mind.

The other was a rather painful memory. It was from the last day before he became a full blooded geek. He was in his early teens and they (he and his parents) were on a vacation in Florida. Every day was spent on a beach. He liked sea. His mother preferred to sun-bathe while his father adopted a little more complex habit. A proper, dynamic swim (about ten minutes) followed by a half an hour of rest next to his wife. He always stopped swimming in late afternoon and just chilled out in shade and drank beer.

Edward wasn't like that. He spent every day playing in water. When the sea was still, he put on diving goggles and swam underwater. However, he was happiest when there were waves. He could splash around in those for hours.

Through some strange coincidence, a girl from Edward's class was there as well with her family. It was strange, Edward had told his schoolmates where his parents were taking him and she didn't say anything. Come to think about it, she wasn't even excited to bump into Edward. Luckily for Edward, she wasn't annoyed either. Edward didn't even remember it but he used to have a crush on her.

Somewhat bigger waves came one day and he convinced his parents to let him rent a foam board. He wanted to show off to the girl. Unfortunately for him (or fortunately, that depends on a point of view), he ended up embarrassing himself. Whenever he attempted to catch a wave, he lost his footing and went head-first into the surf. At some point, he noticed that the girl was gone. Was the girl similar to Bella? Probably not. Hard to tell.

It would be an overstatement to say that this experience changed his life. It was more like the proverbial last straw. He had always known that he was different. Smarter. Meant for greater things than others. Such as sitting in a dark cellar and working on a computer all day long. Yeah.

One thing stuck with him. An appreciation for an elegance in speed. Like professional surfers, riding powerful waves. They didn't use any energy on actual forward movement - a wave took care of that. They merely needed to utilize it correctly.

"Exotic particles," said Edward to his teammates.

"Excuse me?" asked Emmett.

"Look, gravity is just a deformation of time-space, right?" elaborated Edward. "We could look at it as if it was a fourth dimension. Or fourth, fifth, and sixth, since gravity is a vector force."

"Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, if we consider time as fourth and if gravity affects time," added Bella.

"Only if time is one-dimensional," quipped Alice.

"No, forget about time," disagreed Edward. "We are talking about the game mechanics. Navigation in 3D space."

"And how are exotic particles going to help me?" reiterated Emmett. "And which ones, since we are talking about it."

"Ones which aren't discovered yet."

"You've got to be kidding me. How's that different from magic?"

"No, listen to me!" urged Edward. "Think back to our discussion about their breath. What if dragons have some kind of a sack in their belly which contains these exotic particles? They are somehow naturally generated by their metabolism. And these particles have an unique ability to deform these gravimetric dimensions which would help our dragons not only to overcome gravity but sometimes to create a surfing effect as well."

"A surfing effect?"

"Yes. The player's dragon would utilize this in flight but NPC dragons would be able to do all sorts of other things with it."

"Like what?" asked Jasper, who became interested in Edward's idea.

"I don't know! Getting to the planet's orbit? FTL capability? You tell me!"

"Whoa!" stopped him Rosalie. "Let's not go that far yet. You mentioned the dragon breath earlier."

"Yes. What if we were looking at it wrong? What if it's like in that Formic ship in Formic wars?"

Jasper knew what was Edward talking about. It was a reference to books in which an alien ship attacked Earth. The ironic thing was that their most gruesome weapon was actually an exhaust of their near-light-speed drive.

"Their breath is merely a byproduct of their flight," he spoke, beating Edward to it. "The exotic particles from their gravity sack would destabilize by being used and escape into a breath sack. This sack would be connected to their windpipe and they would simply expel any excess particles from their mouth."

"So, dragons don't actually breathe fire," commented Emmett. "They just vomit used up fuel."

"Exotic particles," reminded him Edward.

"I'm just thinking about how is it going to translate to the game mechanics and controls," wondered Jasper.

"No need to make it complicated," stated Rosalie. "Think about driving a car. It's actually automatic for an experienced driver. I think that any dragon would control its own body even more effortlessly which would remove any need for any low level flight controls on the side of a player."

"Exactly," agreed Edward. "You just toggle on a flight mode and off we go."

"We'll need to think about how exactly is a player going to control this surfing effect," commented Jasper.

"It doesn't have to be named a surfing effect," interrupted him Edward. "It was just an idea."

"Whatever. I just wanted to say that there are going to be two sets of controls probably. One for wings and the other for the surfing effect. Approaching this in a wrong manner will make players hate us."

Emmett raised his hand and proposed to make it impossible for a player to roll on his back (in the game). It made things simpler so nobody was against it. They discussed the matter into late night.

The six friends loved moments like these. This kind of creativity made them fuller than their regular jobs. As a matter of fact, it was as much of a fulfillment as any no-lifer could ever hope for.

They also liked the way the game code and its usage of libraries was organized from a legal point of view. All used libraries were dual-licensed. They were LGPL (or LGPL like) and free for non-commercial projects. However, they could be used in commercial projects as well for a fee.

This was essential for the way their project started and grew. In the beginning, they were just a bunch of friends who started to work on the project in their free time. Later on, Carlisle used his contacts to find a distributor for them. A small undistinguished company. All this company had to do was to pay the fees and game was going to be releasable commercially. The company wasn't paying them anything, their only tie was a mutual promise to release the game together.

Not that it was that simple, of course. They were a small team cooperating with a small distributor. Even after their work was going to be finished, there was still the matter of dabbing, soundtrack, localizations, and other things. They sometimes worried whether the company was going to find resources for that. There was no doubt that their game was way out of the league of this company. A similar thing could be said about the team. They were just six of them and they were developing a highly complex product. However, they weren't worried on that score. It was something they could overcome by their diligence and they had high confidence in themselves.

All in all, the work was coming along quite well. Jasper finished a rough outline of the game mechanics in its later stages but it was all still a matter of planning. At the moment, Bella and Edward were still working on the game engine. The others weren't idle, of course. Alice and Rosalie were busy creating graphical content and Emmett was working with Edward all the time.

* * *

One day they all received an e-mail from Carlisle. They needed to meet. He and the entire teem. Considering that he had met with their distributor a week earlier, it sounded significant.

They met at the faculty where he was teaching in an empty conference room. Everybody could tell that something was wrong from Carlisle's sombre face. Moreover, Esme was present. There was little reason for that unless she was supposed to provide moral support.

Nobody asked any questions like "What's going on?" Everybody just sat down and waited for Carlisle to speak.

"I've got some news," he started. "I should have told you about it a week ago but I waited till now for two reasons. I wanted to find out more first and I wanted to tell you this face to face."

The team came to a conclusion immediately that the distributor wanted to back out of the deal. Emmett wanted to make some kind of an exclamation but he held himself back.

"To put it in a short way, our distributor is going under."

That was much worse. It meant that they were without a distributor. This time, the team didn't stay silent.

"What happened?" asked Bella. "I thought that they were financially stable."

"Have you followed with how their `To Tres Picos and Back' did in sales?" asked Carlisle.

"To tres what?" asked Edward.

Jasper raised his hand and Carlisle nodded at him.

"It's a little, wish-to-be-funny adventure-like game about a family vacation," he explained. "It's full of lame jokes and game-play mechanics which don't make any sense but people like Emmett would surely love it. Game magazines slammed it but that was to be expected. It wasn't supposed to be a hit after all - just a cheap B-title to keep them afloat before our game is ready for release."

"And that's the problem," followed up Carlisle. "According to all projections, it was supposed to pay for itself and more. While it wasn't good, it targeted virtually everybody. Children above eight, adults, men, women. Then the numbers came about a month ago. The project didn't even pay for itself."

"That doesn't make any sense," argued Jasper. "What happened?"

"Well, let's begin with those game magazines. They should have taken into account that it's B category and give it a column among other B-titles. Instead, they all wrote a page or two in which they slammed every little inadequacy. That's rather strange, isn't it? Then more problems followed. Big retail chains refused to put it on their shelves. A lawsuit was filled for using other company's technology without paying for a license. Another one for using the name Tres Picos. Neither of those cases are resolved yet but they cost money."

"Sabotage?" wondered Rosalie in disbelief.

"Quite. And whoever targeted them even had someone in the inside."

"Why would somebody want to sink a stupid B game?" commented Alice.

"I don't think it was about that," affirmed Carlisle.

There was a moment of silence.

"The investors refused to keep them alive and fund the distribution of your game. Banks didn't even want to talk about loans. And if that doesn't convince you then maybe this will: I learned two days ago that somebody attempted to secure ownership of your project."

Nobody remained silent this time around. There was a cacophony of shouts, exclamations, and threats to unknown parties.

"Calm down! Calm down!" boomed Carlisle. "It wasn't possible, of course. You didn't take any funding from our ex-distributor yet so you've got the full ownership of your game. The fact remains that we are without a distributor."

"Can't we talk to some of those people?" theorized Bella. "They surely know people who know people who can hook us up with another distributor."

"As far as they are concerned, they all lost their jobs because of us. They won't lift a finger to help us."

"But why would someone do that?" couldn't believe Alice.

"Well, our game contains some experimental technologies and novel game mechanics and concepts," pondered Jasper. "Sure, it won't be top quality but many players are able to forgive that in experimental games made by new, small teams. It won't have a large target populace considering its position on a fringe of the mainstream gaming but that's no obstacle for gaining a cult following. My point is that there are certain large companies who wouldn't like such a competition. They would prefer to make a similar game first, just dumbed down. A lot."

Anger grew in Bella's eyes as Jasper talked. The project meant a lot to her. The others shared her sentiment.

"So, what are we going to do?" asked Emmett the obvious next question.

"Get another distributor, obviously," answered Carlisle. "Failing that, we can look into alternative distribution means."

"Like releasing it on Source Forge for free?" proposed Edward. He didn't offer to ask his employer to talk to their distributor.

"There's no need to be sarcastic. I'll try to find a way how to make this project a commercial one."

"No, I'm serious. We don't need a voice actor for the protagonist and after we release the game, we can get volunteers to record speeches for NPCs and send them to us. Moreover, there are certain GPL projects which we could use in such a case."

"Slow down," curbed him Jasper. "We can't release an unfinished product in this case. This isn't some small-time indie game where such a thing would be tolerated - we always aimed to make this a professional A title. We don't even have the functionality yet so there can be no talk about releasing the story episodically."

"Then we'll get donations and help from volunteers!"

"No one knows us! We've never released a game before."

"Gentlemen!" called Carlisle (he meant Edward and Jasper). "I said already that I'll try to find a way to release this commercially. That being said, the same people who suffocated our distributor may get in our way again. You need to do some serious thinking."

"About what?" asked Emmett.

"About whether we want to be defeated by them," muttered Bella. "They aren't doing this to put our project in a difficult financial situation. They are doing this to prevent it from ever being released."

There was a moment of silence.

"Well, I'm determined to get this game out even at the cost of never making a penny on it!" avowed Edward.

The others had to admit one thing: He was the main programmer of the project. If anybody had a right to make such statements, it was him.

"You know, electricity costs money," poked him Emmett.

"Let's take this one step at a time," proposed Bella. "Edward, you wanted to use that purely LGPL library to implement path-finding. Go ahead with that. Or any other LGPL library without dual licensing you wish to use. Stay away from GPL for now."

"What about GPL with a linking exception?" asked Edward quickly.

"Let's leave this for later," interjected Jasper. "We need to address something else at the moment. Carlisle, is there any possibility of the project getting stolen by somebody?"

"Well, as you know, Bella has written a paper about the game's engine," answered Carlisle. "So no, no one can file a patent on this. Not even Bella herself because it was published more than a year ago."

"Good."

They had a short break and then returned to discuss their plans in more detail.

Esme came up with an idea to recruit voice actors among the students. There should be enough suitable people among all the faculties of the university.

Carlisle also promised that in a case of an emergency, they should be able to work on their project in Bella's "office" at the faculty. The condition for that would be allowing any interested students to participate.

It was night when they parted. Despite the terrible news, everybody was filled with optimism and energy.

* * *

Unbeknown to the team of young developers, intellects cool and unsympathetic regarded their project with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against them. They were preparing to unleash a new terror on them, previously unseen on the field of corporate warfare.

...

Ironically enough, the only two people still working on this surprise at the moment were two young technicians who were performing routine testing and maintenance. Their minds, unlike their bosses' intellects, weren't neither cool nor too unsympathetic. To be honest, they weren't that much different from Bella and her team but they lacked their imagination and ambition.

"Dammit!" cursed one of them. "Why can't we just update their software through wireless connection?"

"Not safe," answered the other. "That's what the bosses say. Somebody could hack the units. However, I know of a trick which will enable us to make updates almost as easily."

"Well, tell me."

"You must not tell anybody."

The first technician nodded in confirmation. The second one pulled out an USB stick from his pocket.

"You can't be serious," commented the first one.

"Who would suspect? Plus, it would be a little bit tricky to get to a convenient position in a real situation."

* * *

At the moment, however, our team was still oblivious to the danger which they were destined to confront. They were using this sweet period of peace to pen out first parts of the storyline:

A space shot featuring a star from an intermediate distance. Light music evoking Star Trek on the background. In a little while, the camera captures a comet. In its wake, meteoroids.

Any well read person knows the significance of the comet. It's theorized that comets spread spores of life throughout the universe. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not because it's the symbolism that counts in this case. Alas, the thing that is carried by the comet aren't spores and it isn't on the comet itself. It's inside one of the meteoroids behind it.

The comet passes by a planet. Judging by splotches of blue, green, and white, it's probably a habitable planet. Some of the meteoroids are caught in its gravity well, including the one. It falls down, shedding bits and pieces in its fiery entrance.

The camera moves into the meteor. Something is inside it. Something egg-shaped and warm. Something alive.

As the meteor keeps falling, something sparks between it and the atmosphere. Or rather between the core of the meteor and the planet. True enough, the camera pans down, following a lance of invisible spiritual energy, visualized for the sake of the spectator. So fast that an eye can barely follow, it goes down through the surface of the planet, to its very core. A bond has been made between the planet and the thing in the meteor.

Down on the surface, a tribe of primitive smallish green-skinned humanoids watches the shooting star as it plummets down. They grow scared and panicky when they realize that it's falling awfully close to them. The night sky lights up and the tribesmen hear a thunderous noise. They all run to hide in their caves but they still hear and feel the impact.

In the morning, the bravest of them crawl outside and hike in the direction where they suspect the "star" fell. The area is arid and rocky, with no trees. There are some occasional bushes and the goblin-like people spot a column of smoke in distance. That helps them pinpoint the correct direction. Some less brave tribesmen observe them from distance. Unwittingly, their actions predetermine their future standing in the budding society.

As they get closer, the smoke becomes thinner. They notice that it isn't a single column of smoke but many smaller ones coming from smoldering bushes and other vegetation. Seeing the damage scares some of them and they slow down. Others continue.

Finally, first of them reach the crater. They fear that the ground is going to be hot but it is not. Some of them notice strange sharp jagged pieces of rock around. They believe that they are pieces of the meteorite but they are actually indigenous. They melted on the impact from the pressure. The important fact is that these pieces are sharper than any tools owned by the primitive people.

The group of explorers circle around the crater and observe the meteorite at the bottom from all sides. It takes some time before two of them descend inside. More tribesmen arrive by that time but most of them keep a respectful distance.

The two men stop roughly in the middle of their descent. It's hard to tell whether it's from fear or whether they feel something strange emanating from the space rock. After a while of debating among themselves, they turn around and go up again. Nobody sneers at them. Using their primitive language, the two tell the others that the crater shouldn't be entered lightly.

Two more brave the crater. A man and a woman (his mate) this time around. They don't make it as far as their predecessors.

In next few days, more and more members of the tribe arrive. They are awed by the impact area and don't dare to approach even the edge of the crater. The ones who journeyed to the crater as first command a great deal of respect among everybody else. They establish a perimeter around the crater quickly. Once again, it's unclear whether they simply want to secure their newly found privileged position in the tribe or whether they feel genuine respect to the meteorite.

Over next several weeks, the tribe moves all its supplies and possessions to the crater area. Some of them find some half-collapsed caves which are quite away from the crater. The most industrious of them start building primitive shelters. At the moment, the observer doesn't think about how it's possible that the cave-dwellers started building "houses" suddenly. The meteorite in the center becomes an object of worship for the goblins.

Years pass (as is later revealed, a year on this planet is only slightly longer than on Earth). A town grows around the crater. The tribe becomes a society. All the leaders live in huts at the edge of the crater. Others live in rings further away. The closer to the edge, the more important the person or family is. Nothing is inside the crater yet with exception of some totems. No one approaches the meteorite. The observer can examine it all at leisure but the range of motion of the camera is limited to the crater.

Decades pass. Those who were children at the time of the impact are old now. The edge of the crater is lined with stone houses half chiseled into the rock. The town around grew into a city.

No one lives inside the crater itself, just like before. However, there are some temples and other structures meant for worship. Almost nothing is in the center of the crater, with the exception of some stairs and other minor changes.

Most people can't go in the crater, with the exception of certain religious festivals. No one enters the central area or even approach the meteorite. The only exception is the high priest, once a year. All the other priests support him at such a time by making a wide circle around the central area.

Unfortunately, decadence comes almost at the same time as this extraordinary growth. The leaders use the authority "given" to them by the meteorite to keep the little nation under control. They work with the priests closely in this regard. Those profit from the arrangement in their own way. The stone altars in the crater become red with blood of sacrificed animals. When no one watches, the priests eat the slaughtered animals. The tribe is also obligated to keep the priests supplied with anything else they need.

The arid land around is incapable of supporting the city. The goblins used to be nomads and few in number. That's out of the question now. Hunters and gatherers venture far away from the crater in search for food but it's not enough. Many are hungry but no one leaves. It seems like the rock from space is a downfall of their society. Agriculture or husbandry is out of the question. Even if it was possible in the area, the goblins would be incapable of it.

The decay continues and the rites of worship grow ever bloodier. The priests start sacrificing their own citizens. The observer can't "watch" it any more and the image dims from time to time, as if someone was closing his eyes.

Unrest spreads among the citizens. It's quelled by introducing a new kind of sacrifice: Hunters bring remains of what appears to be a human being. Curiosity is sparked among the goblins. The high priest places the remains on an altar and burns them.

The priests and leaders meet that night and debate. The group of hunters is questioned.

Next day, the citizens are assembled again. The high priest tells them that their deity from the sky wasn't satisfied by the dead sacrifice. A war-band is assembled. The chieftain himself takes command and the group of hunters guides the force back where they went before. Unbeknown to them, the humans are mobilizing too.

Many days later, several survivors return. The war-band was wiped out. The chieftain is dead. The priests attempt to calm the panicking citizens. The high priest questions the survivors whether they have been followed. It doesn't matter, enough injured goblins have been left behind for interrogation. They can't speak the language of the humans but they can point. Almost no one is left to defend the city.

At night, some goblins who live at the edge of the city leave and journey back to the caves from which their ancestors came decades ago. They are mainly women with children.

The humans arrive in a few days. They don't seem to be a real army, more like a militia. There are farmers, hunters, guards, and rangers. Nonetheless, they are horseback, posses better weaponry (bronze weapons, bows and arrows), and are quite organized. To the disorganized goblins, they do appear like an unstoppable army.

They charge the city. The goblins hide among buildings and strike at every opportunity. They know the battleground but they are doomed nonetheless. Some of the attackers start setting fires.

The high priest runs to the meteorite in panic. It's unclear why. Maybe he hopes that his god will save him for his service. He gets cut off by fire and then something strange happens. He's got two ways in front of him - left or right. He can't decide where to go and death is all around him. He calls to his "deity" for advice subconsciously. Maybe it's from the lifetime of being near the meteorite but there is actually a possibility of getting an answer back. A hint can be given to the high priest to go either left or right. It doesn't matter what kind of a hint is given. If nothing is done, the high priests will keep standing there until an archer shots him. The path to the left leads to being trampled by horses. The one to the right will get him decapitated.

The attackers spare no one. Some goblins attempt to escape the city but only a few succeed. Just like those who left earlier, they will revert to being cave-dwellers. However, they will tell stories to next generations about the great city they once had and they will hate the human race forever.

The creature in the meteorite can't bear all the death any longer. It closes its senses and goes to sleep again. The image goes black but the sound can be heard for a little while longer.

* * *

Jasper and Edward sat on a sofa, staring at their notes. Both of them seemed to be in stupor. One would almost say that they had smoked something. Alas, it wasn't the case. There were two glasses on a table, covered by some black sticky substance on the inside. It was condensed Coca Cola. Some of it was still in a kettle on a stove.

"That much sugar can't be healthy," whined Edward. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Don't be a wuss," Jasper reprimanded him, but he himself didn't feel much better.


	2. Twilight

Twilight

Edward waited in a line in a café. Some people behind him talked about a new sensation called "TheFacebook". It made Edward cringe. He had done his best to ignore this thing, hoping for its swift demise which didn't seem to be coming any time soon. It was unnatural. Computer people weren't supposed to socialize, with a possible exception of R&D meetings.

The line moved and then it was Edward's turn.

"A latte with no sugar, a cinnamon roll, and four doughnuts," he ordered.

"Here or to go?" an employee asked.

"The coffee and the roll here, the doughnuts in a bag."

He paid and carried his tray to a nearest free chair. There was a young student sitting opposite from him. He was working on his laptop. Edward frowned when he noticed the logo of the company he hated more than anything else (even social media) on the laptop.

"Baked cheese sandwich!" an employee cried.

The student stood up and went to retrieve his order. Working quickly, Edward pulled out his killer USB stick. It contained a virus written by him when he was still in school. He had boasted to a fellow student of his that he had written a software which can crash the reviled operating system. The other student was like "WTF? I've got a disc full of applications which do the same without even trying to!"

The only trick was how to get the virus on a computer and run it. Edward inserted the stick. He was in luck, auto-mount and auto-play was enabled. He retrieved the stick, ate last bit of the roll, and downed last swig of coffee. He walked out and observed the student through a window as he lost his nerve and started to pound his laptop.

Feeling really well, Edward walked back to their basement. It was late evening already but he planned to work through the night. He whistled and swung the bag of doughnuts as he walked.

Suddenly, street lamps on the street where he was went dark. It wasn't a circuitry malfunction, someone turned them off. No one else but him was around. Edward started to have a bad feeling.

He was in the middle of the street, it didn't matter whether he went back or forward. He pulled out his penlight and continued at a faster pace.

He heard a thud to his right. He shone his light in that direction. A figure was revealed. It looked like a man but a highly peculiar one. Apart from the fact that he probably jumped down on the street from a roof, there was also something unnatural and rigid about his posture. The light reflected in a strange way from his skin.

"Hello?" croaked Edward.

The man stood there, as if waiting for instructions from an unseen puppet master. That wasn't actually true. He was waiting for the CPU in his head to finish recognition of Edward's face and that's something that takes time, especially when written in an inefficient way.

Edward didn't wait for anything and ran for it. The man was at him in a split of a second. He slammed the geek against a wall and resumed the examination of his face. Not that it mattered at this point for the victim but target confirmation was needed. His eyes were completely dull, empty, with no sign of intelligence.

As Edward flailed around with his arms, the penlight still in his hand, he noticed something strange in its light. There was an USB port in the attacker's neck. And above it, there was a logo - the very same logo he had seen a while ago on the student's laptop. Without thinking about it, he reached for his killer stick in his pocket.

Whatever software was running in the creature's head finished its work. Inhibitors which kept him in place released its control over his urges. The attacker opened his mouth and sank his teeth in Edward's neck at the same time as Edward inserted his USB stick.

Unbelievable pain erupted from the wound. Edward was so paralyzed by it that he couldn't even scream.

The attacker didn't fare much better. It seemed like whatever was done to him was designed not to work without the controlling unit. He started to twist spasmodically and released Edward.

Both of them fell on the ground. Their eyes met and it seemed to Edward that something like awareness appeared in the assassin's look right before he started to burn inside out. Probably some kind of a self-destruct mechanism triggered by the failure of the CPU.

Edward rolled away. He too was burning, in his own way. Fire was spreading through his veins. It took enormous effort to fish out his cellphone and hit Bella's speed-dial.

* * *

It's night and it's raining lightly. A primitive wagon is pulled by two horses along a muddy road in a forest. There are two horse riders in front and two more behind the wagon. The only person on the wagon is the driver. Other people could sit in the back but no one wanted to because no one wanted to be near the cargo.

The inside of the wagon is lined with little fir branches, it seems like they didn't have any hay at hand. There, nestled on the lining, is the meteorite. Or at least most of it. Somebody chipped some of it away. It's unclear how much time has passed and how has the meteorite gotten there and no explanation is given. Truth to be told, it's irrelevant for the further story.

Whoever was chipping the outer layer away stopped the moment he reached the surface of the object inside. It looks like a strange smooth rock with dark green sheen to it and only a tiny patch of it is revealed. It glistens when light of torches shine on it.

All the people in the group are agitated. They feel the presence of whatever is inside the meteorite. The same goes for the horses.

It seems that they aren't the only ones. A wolf howl sounds through the night. One of the guards comments on it in an unknown language. His tone is tense, almost angry.

The group continues. One of them prepares a bow, others have spears. There's only one sword. There isn't enough light to tell for sure but it looks like a bronze one, just like before. The same goes for tips of spears.

The archer spots a wolf and fires. He misses.

The horses are afraid. The driver attempts to calm his ones down by verbal commands but it doesn't work. He tells the riders to ride next to them but there isn't enough space on the road. There also isn't enough time.

The wolves attack. There's chaos everywhere and the horses panic. The wagon crashes and the meteorite is launched oo the darkness.

It rolls down a hill, loosing bits and pieces. Finally, it reaches the bottom of a ravine. It hits a boulder and there's a loud crack. Nothing happens at first but then the meteorite falls apart in two large pieces. The egg inside is revealed.

Two wolves approach it. While it looks and smells like an ordinary stone to them, they can still feel presence of something inside. They snarl and growl at it but it doesn't react in any way. One of them takes a swipe at it. The egg just rolls away. The wolves leave again.

A short while later, the egg stirs. A tiny claw breaks trough. More of the egg shell starts to crumble and before long, a little dragon is hatched. He stretches his wings and lets out a muffled cry to test his lungs (or whatever it is that dragons have). It seems that the dragon is aware of the danger around and doesn't want to attract attention.

A careful observer would note that while the dragon doesn't posses any limbs other than his legs and wings, he actually has some kind of arms and hands merged into his wings. The "arms" form the edges of the wings, as usual. The unusual thing is that he has actual fingers, including an opposable thumb, in addition to those which form the struts in his wings. The fingers are shaped in a way which allows them to fold into each other to decrease their aerodynamic drag.

His upper body is (at the moment) as big and muscular as his lower body but there's no telling how will that change as he grows up. His wings are large when compared to his body but there's no doubt that he's unable to fly. His scales seem soft and delicate. His head is somewhat large when compared to his body, as is usual with newborns. Still, it seems rather small and inadequate. One wonders if it's possible for dragons to grow more braincells over time.

The dragon folds his wings and wobbles away into underbrush. He seems to be bipedal but he uses his folded wings for support when he looses balance. The pieces of the shell disintegrate into fine dust behind his back.

The man with a sword arrives. He carries a torch in his left hand. He's got scratches all over but no heavy injuries so far. His sword is covered by blood. He examines the halves of the meteorite, the revealed cavity in them, and the dust.

The man curses at first but then he notices footprints. He brings his torch close to the ground and examines them. He doesn't get it at first, he doesn't connect the prints with the meteorite. It seems that the men thought that it was some kind of a gem filled with some strange power inside the meteorite.

Finally, he realizes it. He doesn't understand it but he doesn't need to. He follows the footprints before the rain erases them. The little dragon crouches in his hideout. One wrong move might mean instant death or capture. There's no question that he's absolutely powerless against the man.

When the man is almost at him, the wolves return. He turns sharply to face the danger. He decides not to wait for one of them to pounce on his back and makes his own move. One of the wolves falls dead.

The dragon exploits the opening and makes a run for it. He looks "over his shoulder" some distance away. More wolves have arrived and the man is bleeding heavily from a grievous wound on his leg. It doesn't seem like he's going to get out of this one alive. The dragon keeps running.

It's dark all around because of cloud cover and dense foliage. The light of the torch can't be seen any more, not even a glimmer. The dragon doesn't mind. The way he sees in dark is different but his vision is sharp and more than adequate.

He's far from being out of the woods. The passage of the group attracted attention of a whole pack. The dragon enters a small stream to cover his track. Downstream or upstream? The dragon decides to travel up.

He reaches a point where passage further is guarded by a wolf who paces back and forth. There's a gentle breeze in the valley coming from the wolf's direction. That's good so the dragon creeps forward, careful not to splash water.

The wind changes direction and the wolf smells the dragon. There's a deeper place in front of the dragon so he dives there, attempting to burrow even deeper into the stream bed. Luckily, there are no pebbles in that place. The water is cold and being fully submerged in it robs the dragon of his warmth but that's inconsequential at the moment. He also finds out that he can stay underwater for a very long time this close to a flowing surface. Not that he wouldn't be able to hold his breath for the necessary time.

As the wolf approaches, the dragon realizes that he needs to do one more thing in order to hide - he needs to mask his presence, to suppress the psychic aura which has emanated from him for all those years and which he was using to sense the world around him before he even hatched. He does it and when the wolf gets there, it can't find anything.

The dragon continues once the wolf is away. He wants to run as far away as he can but fatigue arrives in a while. On top of that, he's got an empty belly and he's cold.

He spots a hollow tree. It looks like a safe place to rest. But how to get there without leaving a scent trail? The dragon's little brain mulls over the dilemma as he stands at the edge of the water.

He flaps his wings. No, he can't fly there. Also, he's to weak to jump and glide. Besides, there's no convenient boulder from which to jump.

He remembers some plants which he passed a moment ago. He noted their strong scent. He returns there to examine them properly. Yes, these can do. He plucks some of the leaves and returns forward again.

He finds a flat stone on the bank and picks a pebble from the stream. Using these primitive tools, he grounds the leaves into a fine paste. He applies the paste on his feet as he steps out of the water. He runs to the tree.

As he expected, it's a good place to spend the rest of the night. He needs to sate his hunger before he can go to sleep though. His senses detect a lot of worms in the wood. He digs out the ones closest to the surface and eats them, crawling upward through the inside of the tree in process. He can feel his strength returning to him already.

He finds a comfortable place to sleep once he's full. There's an opening above him through which he can see a piece of the sky. There's still some cloud cover but stars can be seen for most of the time. The little dragon watches them as he tries to sort out the chaos which has filled his mind from the moment he hatched.

His brain is still small and his mind is vastly alien from that of a human so no one can really imagine what are his thoughts like. It's mostly instinct and images. He doesn't know where he is but he somehow knows that he came from the stars, that the rock which encapsulated his egg fell from the sky. This corroborates with what little he remembers from his time with the goblins.

He's perfectly aware of what he is. It's also clear to him that he's got a mother somewhere up there who laid his egg. What's not entirely clear is why she and others of his kind abandoned him but he's got a hunch that it isn't anything out of ordinary. He's got a feeling that there's a purpose for his presence on this planet which for some reason feels like his domain, his home. There's no doubt that this place is more home to him than any other place in the universe - and not just because it's also the only place in the universe he has ever known.

Chirping of a bird wakes the dragon in the morning. He climbs to the top of the tree. Everything is bright and colorful. The bird is sitting on a branch and trills. It notices the dragon and hops away a little. The dragon makes a move toward the bird. It flaps its wings and flies away.

The dragon takes a moment to take a good look at the scenery around him. It's the first time he sees the world in daylight.

Having the bird and the way it flew in fresh memory, he decides for a little experiment. He stands on top of the tree, stretches his wings, and jumps. He drops to the ground like a brick on a parachute. Even though he's still small, his wings can't be used for flying yet. They might be good for dropping from heights or even some limited gliding.

There's no time to play with them now though. No wolves visited the place during the night but he needs to get out of their territory. The dragon eats some more worms and resumes his journey. He keeps following the stream up. The wolves are sleeping now so he doesn't wade through the water which enables him to go faster.

He tries to eat various things during his trek. Berries, roots, and such. Berries don't sate him very much and roots are difficult to digest for a dragon this young. It seems that his best source of nourishment is meat right now.

He reaches the source of the stream in early afternoon. The dragon dilly-dallies by the spring for a moment, contemplating his next course of action. The way up is still clear so that's where he goes. He comes by a tree stump and eats some more worms.

When the sun sets, the dragon hesitates whether to continue or to find a shelter for the night. He is tired, yes, but he can go on for a while longer. He finds a mushroom while he ponders a snacks on it. Not bad.

Suddenly, a wolf howl sounds through the night. The dragon can't be sure but it seems like it's coming from the hollow tree where he slept previous night. The pack has found his trace. He shoots up the hill. He needs to cover more ground while he still can.

They catch up with him in half an hour. His only option is to climb a tree. The wolves circle around it and growl like there is no tomorrow.

The dragon observes the pack. A while later, he somehow recognizes which wolf is the leader. He plucks a cone and lobs it at him. He misses. On second try, he hits the wolf right in his nose. The wolf almost goes berserk.

The dragon climbs higher and looks around. Luckily, it's a mixed forest and there's a leaf tree nearby. That's surely a better place for spending a night. He stretches his wings and jumps over to a neighboring tree. He climbs higher again and jumps to his destination. The wolves follow him. The dragon pays them no attention and finds a good place to rest. The wolves lie down as well but they don't sleep. The dragon wonders why are they pursuing him. He can't possibly smell tasty to them.

When the sun rises, most wolves start to slumber. Some of them keep watching the dragon though. He spots a bird nest on a tree higher up the hill. Using his wings, he jumps over there, one tree at a time. The wolves follow. The nest was abandoned last night when the dragon and his followers arrived. Well, waste not, want not - the dragon eats the eggs, not feeling one bit of kinship.

It looks like the top of the hill isn't far. The dragon continues on his journey. His way of traveling is exhausting but with the pack under him, there's no other option.

He reaches the top soon enough. He climbs the highest tree there and has a look around. Behind him, he sees the valley where he hatched more than a day ago. He's lucky that he chose to go upstream. If he had chosen the other direction, he wouldn't have a good terrain for outmaneuvering the pack.

On the other side of the hill is a small mountain. Its about three times taller than the hill he's on at the moment. The dragon thinks that it might be a good place to hide for a while. It doesn't take long for him to set it as his next destination. The way there is also clear and with a bit of luck, he might even give the wolves a slip. He just needs to wait for the right wind.

When the wind starts blowing against him, the dragon unfolds his wings and jumps. He travels just like before but faster and without climbing because he's going downhill.

He leaves the pack behind and truth to be told, they are somewhat surprised by his sudden take off. Alas, they don't give up. Perhaps they feel that he's dangerous and needs to be dealt with while he's still small.

Thanks to the wind which goes against him, the dragon smells another predator. He also notes scratches on a bark of a tree nearby. A plan hatches in his head. He changes his direction a little. His descent is no longer as steep so he needs to use his muscles more but it's more than worth it.

In a short while, he passes over a bear who just woke up and is still grumpy. The pack is led straight to him. The bear stands up on his hind legs and roars. The pack growls and circles around it but it's obvious that they aren't going to attack. They are out of their territory anyway. The dragon is forgotten for the moment.

The little dragon fully intends to use this opportunity to escape from the pack. He resumes his original course and glide-jumps all the way down until he reaches a line where the slope of the hill meets the slope of the neighboring mountain. He drops to the ground and starts running up again. He can't see the peak of the mountain from his position but he remembers the direction. He slows down after a while.

He comes across a big meadow. He knew it was there, he saw it from the hill. While it's risky to leave the woods, it's faster to cross it than to go around and there doesn't seem to be any danger nearby. He steps out into sunlight.

The weather is actually quite nice this day and it's warm. When he's almost through, he lies down and indulges himself in a little "sunbathing" for a moment. He stares straight into the sun and it doesn't hurt his eyes.

He spots a molehill when he gets up. He doesn't know what it is but he investigates. While the pack may or may not still pursue him, he can't pass a possible source of food.

Extending his senses underground, he detects a tunnel. He follows it, until he finds a cache of paralyzed earthworms. He starts digging. Two minutes later, he snacks on the earthworms. Not very yummy but it gives him strength.

The mole arrives. It smells the dragon but it can't turn around. The fastest way away from the dragon is to go up before retreating underground again.

The dragon waits in ambush and as soon as the mole's nose appears, he strikes. He pulls the mole out but the mole swipes at him with its powerful paws. A fight ensues. It's a nice change for the dragon to face an enemy who is smaller than him. The mole has larger claws but in the end, it's no competition at all. The dragon kills the mole and feasts on its flesh. It's his first proper meal on this planet.

After a short rest, the dragon continues upward. He comes across another meadow in the afternoon. It's full of flowers. His ears pick out a strange buzzing. He follows the sounds and finds a beehive. It smells nice. He climbs to it and the bees attack. He plucks a few of them from the air and eats them but then he stops paying them any attention and rips into the hive. There's honey inside. He eats the hive whole, husk and all.

Darkness comes and it doesn't seem like anything is pursuing the dragon. Still, he's cautious and climbs on a suitable tree. He wakes up before sunrise and continues. He looks for more food on his way and manages to track down a hare to its burrow. He takes a break to eat and digest it.

I takes more than a half a day to reach the top boundary of the forest. Only mountain pines and similar things grow above this point. It means that the top of the mountain isn't far. A human would consider this last part of the climb the most difficult one but it's actually no challenge for the dragon. He can travel there almost as quickly as down in the valley.

He reaches vicinity of the top of the mountain sometime after sunset. There are no more mountain pines above his position. He doesn't go all the way up, it's dark anyway. He finds a good place between a rock and a mountain pine and goes to sleep.

He gets up before sunrise and finishes his journey. The top of the mountain isn't as pointy as it seemed from the hill. It's actually flat and there are even small patches of yellowish grass. The dragon hops around for a while before he finds the best place on which to stand.

Sunrise comes and reveals the land around. The dragon sees more mountains in distance, most of them are bigger than the one he stands on at the moment. At the very edge of his vision is a boundary of an arid area. The dragon suspect that the very desert where the goblins found his meteorite lies beyond.

The dragon remembers the moment of his hatching. He neglected something back them and it's time to redress that. He straightens up, unfolds his wings, and lets out a little roar, as loud as his small body allows. It's enough to startle all birds in vicinity. The dragon marks their positions.

As he studies the terrain he spots something at a lower slope of one of the nearer mountains. It's an anomaly in the natural pattern of the landscape. It's too far to tell anything more about it but the dragon remembers the area for later inspection.

He spends a day and night exploring the area around the peak and searching for food. When he concludes that most of edible things around were eaten, he finds a convenient cavity in a rock. He collects gravel and all sorts of dry grass, moss, and twigs. There's only one thing to do when a dragon has nothing to eat. He buries himself in his burrow and goes to deep sleep.

Torrents of heavy rain awaken the dragon several days later. He finds a better shelter where he's better shielded against the elements.

The rain stops shortly after noon. The dragon returns to the top of the mountain and plans his next journey. There's no point in staying there any longer and he has stayed in one place for too long anyway.

There's a river in the valley between the two mountains and it's reachable by gliding from his position. It doesn't flow towards his destination but should the dragon find out that it's easily traversable for him, it will be more economical to follow it until the nearest point rather than traveling straight to the destination. Moreover, there could be fish.

When the wind is right, he takes a running start and jumps. He starts loosing altitude immediately but the slope under him is even steeper. Moreover, it seems like his altitude loss is a tiny bit smaller than during his last flight.

Unfortunately, the wind shifts after a while. Not in the opposite direction, just by ninety degrees. It's coming from his side now. The dragon thinks about changing course but that would take him too far away from his way. He goes into a controlled dive instead to prevent stalling.

Crowns of trees below are getting closer and closer. Fast. The dragon thinks whether he shouldn't do something about it. Is there a meadow on which he could land? No, there isn't. Maybe he should have spent more time observing birds and less time eating their eggs. He pulls up at the last moment and stalls. The side-wind doesn't help either. The dragon hopes that there's nothing too sharp under him. He attempts to grab onto a branch but misses it and clips his wing on it instead. His legs aren't strong enough anyway. He has enough presence of mind to fold his wings before crashing. At least there aren't any stones.

He lies on the ground for a while. He realizes that he should have turned against the wind before attempting to land. He needs to remember it for next time.

He inspects himself. To his relief, he didn't sustain any critical or head injuries. His wing is unusable for the moment, no more gliding for some time. He is also too vulnerable in his current state to continue. He finds some mushrooms to eat and rests.

Next day morning, he starts his walk towards the river. He spots a lynx and evades it widely.

He reaches the river. It is brisk but deep enough to enable him to swim in it without hitting stones all the time. He lets the stream to carry him. The fact that he can stay submerged in this oxygen rich water almost indefinitely is of great help. He intrinsically knows that it's up to him whether he wishes to strengthen and evolve this ability or whether he wishes to focus on his other skills (such as flying).

He tries to catch a fish but they are all faster then him. He has no chance. He thinks that he's gotten lucky when he sees one that doesn't run. A large one to boot. It's a pickerel, with a big mouth full of sharp teeth. A fight ensues. Once again, the dragon underestimates the situation. The pickerel is faster and more agile. The dragon doesn't fear for his life but he doesn't want to get hurt again. Struck by a sudden idea, he releases his aura. The fish is startled and retreats. The dragon suppresses the aura again to avoid drawing attention and gets out of the water. If he knew how to curse, he would do so.

After another night of licking his wounds, the dragon returns in the river and continues his journey. He doesn't hurry because he needs to allow his wounds to heal properly but he doesn't want to dilly-dally either. He's in an unknown area and there are no easily defensible places for him to hide in if a pack of predators starts to hunt him again.

Before he reaches the point where he planned to abandon the river, he discovers something. It's an old road. He didn't see it from the mountain. It doesn't seem to be used any more and he can't smell any humans on it but it was surely well traveled in its day. It leads parallel with the river in the downstream direction. In the upstream direction, it turns away and heads to his destination.

The dragon thinks. He doesn't really need to use the road which seems to snake its way up the slope while he can go in straight line regardless of terrain. However, his curiosity is too strong. He follows the road.

He finds a highly oxidized copper object on the way. It seems like a part of something larger - maybe a vehicle, maybe a mount harness or a saddle. He keeps his eyes peeled for such artifacts but the only other thing he finds before arriving to his destination is a bent nail.

He arrives to an abandoned mine. He doesn't recognize what it is because he has no previous experience with such things. He starts looking around.

There are some remnants of structures around a half-collapsed entrance. Anything wooden or clay has rotten or crumbled away, only hardly detectable traces remain. Stone parts are in ruins. There are some more copper nails around. The place was abandoned many years ago.

The dragon enters the mine. He can see right away that these are no natural caves - somebody dug all of it out. It doesn't look very stable but if it hasn't collapsed for all those years, it's not going to fall on his head now. He surely isn't the first living soul to enter it recently - he can smell fresh scent of rodents.

After some time, the dragon figures out what was the purpose of it all: a mineral which he's going to know as salt in future. Humans (or perhaps some other humanoids but most probably not goblins) mined salt there and used the road to transport it. The dragon thinks about it. His little (and inexperienced) brain can't imagine salt being used for trading but he can admit that salt is a useful thing to have, judging by the physiology of local lifeforms.

At the moment, he's more interested in the rodents he has smelled. He follows a trace and finds a nest of rats. Being confident in his superiority, he attacks with an intention of snatching a rat or two and leaving again. Once again, he is caught in his own miscalculation. While a lone rat is weaker than him, a bunch of them can be a problem. He finds himself besieged from all sides and a desperate fight ensues. Somehow, he doesn't think that releasing his mental aura would help. He survives only because he keeps his cool and develops a tactic which leads him to victory slowly. When most of the rats are dead, the remaining ones run away.

The dragon examines his wounds and the carnage around. All of it was was doubly stupid - not only did he got himself almost killed again but he can't even eat all of those rats before they rot. A large amount of salt might help but who knows if there's any left in the mine. Moreover, there are always more rats to find.

He drags a bundle of dead rats outside and finds the most solid ruin to hide in and rest. He would prefer to be inside but he's not ready for another battle. He starts eating.

In the following days, he explores the mine and the area around. Deep down, he finds places where salt was being mined before the mine was closed. There's almost none left. He finds a few more copper items.

He doesn't attack rats in their nests any more but ambushes them when they scurry around instead. They catch on and adapt but he adapts faster.

It doesn't take long for the dragon to get back to his full health. Not only that, it also seems that he has grown bigger and stronger. The strange thing is that his cranial cavity is growing at the same rate and his head is as oversized (when compared to his body) as before. His thinking changes accordingly - less instinct, more analysis and planning. The time before hatching becomes a memory of a memory. Perhaps one way to think about it is to imagine him as a larvae - when he hatched, he wasn't developed the way mammals are when they are born. He is still growing towards that point.

He practices gliding from time to time. He finds a good place for that - a big sloping meadow with a tall tree at its upper end. He doesn't just practice flapping his wings but also examines the thing which helped him during his glide from the mountain. He doesn't think about what it is - just like little children don't think about their legs.

There's nothing else in the mine for him to discover so he sets out into the woods. Once again, he finds a lynx. He evaded one before but now, it's an adequate test of his strength.

He stays downwind and silently climbs on a nearby tree. The lynx doesn't detect him until he lands somewhere above it. The feline snarls at him but doesn't run. They maneuver in preparation for a fight. The dragon makes sure to stay above. The lynx attempts to leap to a higher branch but the dragon intercepts it and draws first blood. The lynx falls down and its paws slip of a few branches before it manages to break its fall and pull itself up. The dragon drops down too and once again, he hovers above the lynx. The animal attempts to do the exact same thing as before and this time, they are both falling down. The lynx twists to land on its legs. Then it feels the dragon's wing claws on its shoulder blades. There's nothing the lynx can do. They meet the ground and the gravity does the rest.

The dragon feasts on the lynx. He considers utilizing the fur but he doesn't see what could he possibly need it for. He decides to make something else though. He designs a fish trap and crafts it using willow branches. He has never seen one before but that's not a problem for his intellect. He puts it in the river and for several days, he just eats the fish he collects there. The trap deteriorates a falls apart eventually but the dragon doesn't repair it because he intends to move on.

Well, not entirely. Not right away at least. What he plans to do is rather a small detour before following his earlier plan to follow the road. For now, he goes up the mountain above the mine. He doesn't go straight up like before but opts to go in a spiral and take his time. Nothing out of ordinary occurs apart from coming across a territory of another bear. The dragon makes sure to avoid it.

After reaching the top, the dragon takes another look around. He can't see the area where he hatched nor does he spot anything new of significance. It looks like following the road is his best bet to discover something.

He decides to make another big glide. Only this time, he isn't going to rely on his wings alone. He plans his route and when the wind is right, he sets off. When his flight is stabilized, he focuses on a strange feeling in his belly and ignites it. He pushes himself up to lower his altitude loss and forward at the same time to increase his speed. He flaps his wings from time to time but uses them mostly for gliding.

He lands in the river and lets the water carry him. He keeps an eye on the road next to the river. Indeed, the two diverge next day and the dragon continues on foot. Just like before, there are no signs of recent traversal. The road is interrupted sometimes but the dragon has no problem of finding it again every time.

The dragon reaches ruins of a larger village before too long. As he will find out soon enough, this village is his destination. There's another river flowing next to it. He dragon calculates that it meets the other river somewhere downstream.

He examines the village and its surroundings. There are signs of other roads leaving from it but unlike the one to the mine, these practically disappear some distance away. They probably weren't that big and well traveled back in the day.

There are plains around the village where fields used to be. Now there are only barely noticeable remnants of stone walls between them. Bushes and other wild vegetation is growing everywhere. The dragon doesn't know what a field is but he stores every detail for later analysis.

Most of the dwellings in the village weren't made of stone so there's nothing left of them. Some buildings had stone foundations and remnants of those can be noted by a careful observer. One of them even had cellar. He discovers a human skeleton in it. Most of the bones have rotten away and the rest fall apart when the dragon touches them.

Only two structures had stone walls. One of them is large but low. The walls weren't as solid and the building is completely in ruins today. The other was taller and solid. It even has some kind of a tower which doesn't look very stable but part of it still stands.

The dragon climbs the tower and looks around, aggregating everything he has noted earlier. In his inner eye, he can see it all now. Carts, like the one used to transport his egg, arriving with salt. Maybe not carts but something even more primitive. People from wide and far coming to the village to... trade? Yes, trade - an exchange of salt for something else. And vice versa, merchants from the village traveling out. Fields and cattle all around and people working them. The large building was used to store salt? The one he's standing on seems like the most important one though. Perhaps some kind of a village center and/or a place of worship? It also looks solid and defensible enough. Then the salt ran out and the mine was abandoned. People stopped coming to the village and its younger citizens started to leave. Eventually, wilderness reclaimed the place.

The dragon doesn't know yet how long is he going to stay in the village and where should he make his burrow but he sleeps in a corner of the building that night. Once again, he watches the night sky and contemplates. It looks like these humans are quite resourceful and developed beings. Most probably the dominant species of this world. He's got a feeling that he's going to be involved with them in the future. Maybe he ought to find and observe some of them before he grows too big to move around unnoticed.

He spends a week combing the area around. No luck. All the roads are completely gone, as if they were never there. No wonder. The dragon discovers signs of floods and landslides. A smaller road had no chance.

He's quite positive that he doesn't wish to return to the valley where he hatched. For one, it doesn't feel right and he wishes to keep moving. Also, what little impression from the time just before hatching he has tells him that the other road was even more desolate than the one between the mine and the village. Of course, he can't fully relate his pre-hatching senses to the world he can see on his own eyes now but he's quite sure that he's correct. He wonders why were those people transporting his egg through such a wilderness.

Another question is, should he even attempt to get to the destination of those people who were transporting his meteorite? Maybe it would be wiser to try to locate and observe some simpler communities.

With no roads to follow, the dragon has only the river to rely on. He builds a small raft and lets the current to carry him to the horizon.

* * *

"We should call police! Or a doctor at least," insisted Alice. It was about a day after they had found Edward convulsing on a street next to a quickly dispersing human shaped pile of ashes.

"And what exactly is that going to accomplish?" snapped Bella. "And how exactly are we going to explain it? We have no idea what it was that attacked him and what would authorities do with him. Maybe they would take him to some underground facility to examine him and we would never see him again."

As she spoke, she walked over to a table where Emmett and Jasper were for a millionth time examining all that remained of the supposed attacker: a few pieces of metal and burned tech, including a completely destroyed microchip. All of it looked like a prop from some sick sci-fi.

"Let me guess," she addressed them. "You've got no idea what it is."

"Too much damage," replied Emmett. "Perhaps Edward can take a look at it when he wakes up."

"If he wakes up," murmured Jasper and continued out loud, "Of course, then he'll be able to tell us what actually happened."

"Shouldn't we at least inform Carlisle?" proposed Rosalie.

Jasper cleared his throat and argued, "If we aren't telling the police, we should leave Carlisle out of this as well, for now. You know, plausible deniability."

"Let's not paint it worse than it is," emphasized Bella. "He's stable. He's in pain, yes, but he's sleeping through it."

That was true, at least judging by his rapid eye movement. Also, when Bella leaned to him a couple of hours earlier, she heard him whispering, "wolves, damn wolves". They couldn't be sure but it was something they had talked about in regards to the plot of their game.


	3. Breaking Dawn

Breaking Dawn

Edward's eyes snapped open. He looked around at his friends leaning over him.

"How do you feel?" asked Bella.

It took a moment before Edward managed to overcome his confusion. His eyesight, hearing, even his sense of smell were amplified. Maybe he was imagining things? Somehow, he didn't think so.

"Well, I feel..." he fell silent again, startled.

The others shared his sentiment. His voice was different. Well, not exactly different. It was pretty much the same as before but it had gained an extraordinary quality.

"To tell the truth, I feel like I could sit down and implement my own STL from memory," he said finally.

That wasn't what his friends expected.

"And?" retorted Bella, momentarily forgetting the situation. "Anybody can do that and many people do when a project requires it. That includes us, don't you remember?"

It was true. Bella and Edward had implemented their own template library which was utilized in core parts of the engine. (mainly because C++ STL was too memory consuming).

"No, that's not what I mean," argued Edward. "I'm talking about the entire GNU STL, for all versions of the C++ standard, without ever referencing the standard specification. And I feel like I could do it in just a few hours. I'm not going to demonstrate because I think that my time would be better used by continuing my work."

"Edward, what happened to you?" asked Jasper resolutely.

"I'm not sure but it hurt like hell," answered Edward, misunderstanding the question. "To escape it, I thought about our work. I'll need to run some ideas with you later, Jasper. Right now, I need to get some coding done."

"That's not what I meant," clarified Jasper. "Who attacked you?"

"Oh, of course," said Edward and recounted the attack.

When he was done, Bella picked the charred tech up and remarked, "This was in its brain, controlling it."

Edward took a look at it.

"I can't be sure with this much damage but it could be ARM," he wagered.

Emmett and Jasper burst out in snickers. That wasn't what they had imagined.

"Would make sense, considering the OS," added Edward.

"But why would a software company send and cyborg at you?" wondered Bella.

"Just because it ran on their OS it doesn't mean that it was then," remarked Emmett. "Though I guess it wouldn't surprise me."

"Maybe they want to stop our project?" theorized Rosalie. "Maybe this is how they normally operate. Maybe this is exactly how they became the biggest software company on this planet."

"I don't know," mused Jasper. "Judging by the chip, this is something new. For all we know, Edward was supposed to be its very first victim."

"And it wasn't a cyborg," remarked Edward.

"More like a replicant, right?" proposed Emmett.

"A replicant?" repeated Bella.

"Yeah. By what Edward told us, the attacker was once a human being. If it wasn't for the wires in his head and a lobotomy to make space for them, he wouldn't be much different from what is Edward now. Edward, you said that you were bitten."

"Yes?"

"As I see it, some kind of a reagent or a virus was used to turn the original human into the attacker. This reagent was still present in his body and when he bit you... you get the idea."

All six of them thought one word: vampire. Alas, nobody said it out loud, because it was ridiculous to contemplate. Replicant was a word which sounded far more scientific.

"So, anything more about how you feel?" prodded Jasper. "Apart from the STL thing?"

"Well, my throat kind of hurts. I guess I'm thirsty. Which isn't surprising, since I didn't drink any water for... how long?"

"Three days," supplied Bella.

"Three says? Felt like longer to me."

Edward stood up and went to a sink. The speed of his movement surprised even him. He barely managed to stop himself from crushing into a cupboard.

"Whoa!" cried Bella.

"Whoa indeed," echoed Edward.

"You know what, let me help you."

Bella took a tin cup and poured him some water. She didn't think that using a glass was a good idea. Edward took a drink.

"That didn't help much," he complained.

"Oooooookaaayy," drawled Emmett. "What are you thirsty for?"

Edward looked around at his friends.

"Guys, I'll tell you something creepy now," he started. "It's really creepy but please, try not to creep out."

"We're listening."

"Here goes: I can smell and hear the blood in your veins. And I think that's the kind of thing I need."

The others swallowed dryly.

"Don't worry!" calmed them Edward. "I'm not going to actually drink human blood, that would be cannibalism."

"Actually, drinking blood isn't so weird," contemplated Jasper. "If the change destroyed your digestion, than consuming nutrients which have been broken down already is your only option."

"And what about milk?" proposed Emmett.

"I don't think that's going to work," disagreed Jasper. "But we can try it."

"Very well, let's get to work," stated Bella and clasped her hands. "Emmett, Rose, could you two go to town and buy some blood from a butcher? Tell them that you need it for cooking a soup. Also, do grab some milk, please. We haven't got any here. Alice, could you call Carlisle and tell him what happened? Don't use a phone, utilize an encrypted Internet call, the way I've shown you. Jasper, you can stay with us - it seems like Edward wants to get back to work."

Everybody went after their goals. Jasper found an old non-functioning keyboard.

"Hey, maybe you should practice on this first," he proposed.

Edward understood that he was referring to his enhanced muscles. He put the keyboard on his lap and tried to press a key. His finger went right through.

"It's ok, you can practice on the rest of the keyboard," commented Bella supportively.

After several tries, Edward determined the right amount of strength. He practiced typing for a while. He talked with Jasper about his ideas concerning the story in the meantime. Bella went to check on Alice. Carlisle wasn't online so Alice sent him an anonymous SMS from a web portal. It contained a secret code telling him to get to his computer at his convenience.

"You know, there's one thing I don't get," mused Jasper. "The people who sent the attacker must know that it has been destroyed. Why haven't they sent another one after us?"

"Because we are in a stage where we explore my new superpowers," answered Edward. "It's too soon for a fight."

"I hope you aren't going to pick a fight with some street gang," Bella implored him.

"But that's what people do in movies in such a situation!"

"No! We've got enough problems as it is."

They turned Edward's computer on. Edward was sighing impatiently while Linux was booting on. Moreover, something seemed off to him. When a login screen appeared, it became clear what it was. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

"What is it?" asked Bella.

"I don't see the picture any more," explained Edward. "My eyes can see too much detail in the screen. I'm hard pressed to ignore the details enough to see it as rows of sub-pixels but I can't make the threesomes merge into pixels."

"Are you saying that you can't use a screen?" asked Jasper.

"Not the way you do. My only option is to take all threesomes of sub-pixels, combine the colors into pixels, and combine those in a picture. In my head, I mean."

"This is getting weirder and weirder," muttered Jasper while Edward typed his login and password.

Edward leaned back in his chair. The backrest groaned under the strain so he had to ease off a little.

"This is taking forever!" he whined.

"It's just a few seconds," settled him Bella. "See? The desktop is loaded already."

Edward checked his e-mails first. There were automated reports from their server and a message from his day-job. They wished him speedy recovery and reminded him about a certain issue which needed fixing.

"We called your boss and told him that you were ill," explained Bella.

"OK, it will be a home-office for me for a while. Though I guess it would be best for me to resign sooner or later."

He started Eclipse next. Once again, ho complained about how slow it was. Bella remained silent this time because she could only agree.

"This is pointless," stated Edward after writing a few lines. "I can't work with such a long response time."

He saved his work, closed the IDE, and opened a terminal emulator. He went to his workspace directory and duplicated the tab. He started vim in the first tab and left the other for command line (he preferred it that way)

"Are you also going to abandon KDE and start using Xfce?" asked Jasper sarcastically.

"Maybe later," replied Edward. "I don't want to have so many changes in such short time."

Bella and Jasper watched in ave as Edward's fingers danced across the keyboard and unbelievable amounts of code exploded on the screen. He also did some refactoring which actually took him longer than writing new code.

"Shouldn't you think about these things before you implement them?" asked Bella.

"I was thinking about them for three days," answered Edward without breaking his tempo. "Don't worry, I'm writing only things which I have discussed with you or which don't need your input."

After a while, Edward made last commit and stood up. Jasper's eyes were shining with excitement. It was clear to him that with Edward in the team, there were almost no constraints to his creativity. Not because he could write as much code as ten programmers - those would have to communicate with each other, review each other's code, have meetings, etc. Edward was like ten developers packed into one man.

"There!" he announced. "It's in three big commits, you can read in their comments what was added. You can try it now. Jasper? Do you've got a minute?"

Jasper just spread his arms in a gesture saying that he had been waiting for exactly that. While Bella compiled the project, the two guys discussed some new mechanics to be added in the game.

In the meantime, Alice received a call from Carlisle. The voice was garbled because their Internet connection wasn't great but it was intelligible.

"Guys?" called Alice. "I've told him what happened. He wants to talk to all of you now."

"Carlisle?" spoke Edward into a microphone. "I was listening to Alice and I've got nothing to add - she relayed it all exactly as I told it myself."

"You mean you were listening while you were coding?" asked Carlisle.

"No, while I was talking to Jasper."

"Astonishing."

"Carlisle," interjected Bella. "What do you think about this attack. Why would they attack us because of our game?"

"Maybe they don't want to let you create a precedent. Moreover, usage of some of the mechanics in your game is quite novel. People in charge don't want the game market to be upset by customers whining about main-stream games being dull when compared to you."

Bella thought immediately about her ideas which didn't make it to the game's design.

"At this moment, we should focus on Edward's physical condition," continued Carlisle. "I've got a friend who's a doctor..."

"No, don't tell anybody about this," interrupted him Bella.

"I concur," agreed Edward.

"And you shouldn't come here either. Keep a low profile."

"That will be difficult. My connection to you is known."

"We'll figure something out. After we learn more about Edward's condition."

"Very well. Stay safe."

"You stay safer," replied Jasper.

Shortly after they concluded the call, Emmett and Rose returned. Edward tried some milk but it didn't work out. By experimenting, they found out that he could tolerate a small amount of it when mixed with a much larger amount of blood.

"Can I have the rest of the milk?" asked Bella.

"Sure, why not," replied Rose, not understanding where was Bella going.

She poured herself a glass and drank it.

"It's just that it's probably the last milk I'll ever drink," she explained. "Without blood, that is."

"Are you seriously thinking what I'm thinking?" exclaimed Jasper. "We don't know anything about this and whether it can be replicated."

"Hey, calm down. Do you remember our talk about using DEVS to simulate events?"

"What does that have to do..." started Jasper and trailed off.

"We've never really discussed this, because it was extra work we could avoid," explained Bella. "But now, our situation is different. Will be different in three days, to be precise. Or even sooner, if administering more reagent will speed things up. So, let's talk about this before we proceed."

"Very well, I'm listening," conceded Jasper.

Edward and Emmett listened intently as this was concerning them too.

"Think about the standard RPG games about human or humanoid adventurers," Bella told them. "What do they all share when it comes to quests and flow of the story?"

"There's none," Emmett stated the obvious. "Story doesn't flow. Until you complete a quest at which point new quests become available. As if time didn't matter."

"Indeed. Some older games tried to tackle this but succeeded only partially. I'm not talking about purely sandbox games without a proper plot. Also, I can't think of any new mainstream games which addressed this at all. Sure, some triple-A titles try to mask this by giving a player a lot of options to give their universe a more organic feel."

"That's why are we using a dragon as a protagonist," reminded them Jasper. "He's the boss, the motivator of events. Nothing gets done without him."

"Why not? Does it mean that if he hides in some cave and stays there for a century that NPCs won't grow old and die?"

"And how's that a time limit going to change? Besides, I don't recollect us agreeing to make this a sandbox, free-roaming game. I want to tell a story!"

"And we shall! If anything, making time matter will actually prevent free-roaming. However, there's no denying that the game is in its principle rather sandboxy. A death of an essential character will get you in the saved games screen but besides that, there's no reason why events shouldn't flow of their own accord. And for one last time: It's not a time limit, it's DEVS. Or something based on it."

"One question," spoke Edward. "Who's going to design and implement it? Even with my new speed, I can't add this to my workload."

"Well, I will, of course."

"In what language? Smalltalk?"

"No, C. I'm sure you are aware that I'm capable of that. It's going to be an independent module or a package of modules. You are going to interface it with the game. It's going to be controlled by scripts, which is where Emmett comes in."

"This is going to generate an infinite amount of possibilities," remarked Alice.

"Well, not infinite. But from a practical standpoint, yes, quite a lot."

"And how's that going to work with voice acting, for example?"

"About that. Did you know that I've dabbled in speech synthesis once? Once the voice acting is done, if we find suitable voice actors to begin with, we'll have a lot of annotated sound files. We'll use those to train synthesis parameters for each character. Unvoiced NPCs will have randomized parameters."

"And who's going to implement it?" asked Jasper. "You again?"

"There's an open source implementation which we can use as a starting point."

"So, we are going full open source now?" asked Edward hopefully.

"Sure, why not? It's not like making money is our main concern anymore. Somebody wants us dead and we need to remove their motive. Moreover, they will send more drones next time. Edward can't defeat them alone."

Jasper contemplated their options. He looked around to gauge the mood of the others.

"Very well," he said in the end. "If you wish to become a super-genius like Edward, that's your choice. However, we'll talk about this sandbox, sorry, DEVS, after you wake up. You know why I'm doing this - I want to tell a linear story with only one possible ending. We can add optional flavors if you wish but then I see no difference between your solution and big budget games. Only you intend to do mathematically what they do manually."

"Not exactly," disagreed Emmett. "Look at it this way: Let's say that you are making a game about a dictator who wants to take over the world. Such a game has only one ending: taking over the world. How you get there is up to you."

"That's a strategy game," dead-panned Jasper.

"I know, bad example. However, our dragon has similar dispositions. Yes, it's about him and his goals don't change. However, it's also about the planet where he lives and that's one big sandbox. We can't simulate all people on it but if this DEVS can do the job at a higher granularity and it can do it in real-time, then I'm all for it."

"Not in real time," corrected Bella. "There will be periodic updates, let's say, every hour. The game will pause for a few seconds and the state machine will recompute itself. Unless there are finer-grained manually added events, of course."

"Yes, that's what I've meant - in reasonable time."

"Look, you can discuss this while I'm changing," stated Bella resolutely. "I'll think about my part in the meantime, then we'll brainstorm when I wake."

Edward raised his hand and asked, "Bella, how exactly are we going to do this? I hope you don't expect me to bite you in your neck."

"No, that would leave a conspicuous scar. Have you looked in a mirror yet?"

Edward's hand went to his neck. True enough, there was a scar.

"What about a syringe?" proposed Alice.

"And who's going to buy it?" sneered Rose. "I won't. It would look like I'm a junkie."

"No time for that," refused Bella. "You'll bite me, Edward, but not in my neck. A little bit lover, I think, so it can be easily covered."

"Ehm..." murmured Edward, feeling uneasy.

"Let's go to the bathroom," proposed Bella.

Emmett made a hoot.

"I just don't want Edward to have to deal with an audience!" Bella shut him up.

Edward was sure that he was red in his face. Then he realized that it wasn't possible any more.

When they were alone (or at least as alone as possible with the rest of the team waiting behind the door), Bella tugged at the neckline of her T-shirt. Edward was startled for a moment. Was she going to partially bare herself? Luckily, she merely uncovered her trapezius area.

"Here, bite me," she told him.

Edward took a deep breath and bared his teeth. He didn't wish to put his lips on Bella, that would be weird.

"You know, I was about to kiss a boy once," commented Bella. "It was in kindergarten. He did exactly what you are doing now. I ran away. It was the first and also the last time I've ever experimented with such things."

That was some seriously deep stuff which she was sharing with Edward. He wasn't sure if he was comfortable with that.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered and bit.

* * *

The dragon arrives to a coast. There's water stretching across the horizon. Either an ocean, a sea, or a really big lake but he doesn't know such terms yet. Another term he doesn't know yet is "east" but he can see that the sun has just risen from the water and knows that it will set over the landmass behind him.

He thinks that he sees something at the coast some distance from the mouth of the river. Also, his little rudimentary raft is falling apart and he doesn't wish the current to carry him out in the open. He jumps from the raft and swims to a beach.

He reaches another village. Once again, it's long abandoned. The dwellings there were less solid than in the trading village but it was abandoned later. Examination of the ruins and artifacts in them makes him believe that the villagers were fishermen.

Once again, he thinks about those people who were transporting the meteorite. Maybe they wished to move it from the area inhabited by the people who clashed with the goblins to a more advanced part of this world.

The dragon walks to the beach and wades into the waves. Upon tasting the water, he detects a large content of salt. Something in his brain crunches this and other facts and deduces what it means.

Not having anything better to do, he stays in the fishing village. He fixes some of the remaining artifacts and uses them to build his own fishing equipment. This gives him a practically unlimited source of food.

After a fortnight of hanging around the village, eating fish, and swimming in the sea, the dragon realizes that there's no point of waiting around for something or somebody to come there. After all, it seems that no one have visited the village for quite some time. It would be quite a coincidence for such a thing to happen shortly after his arrival.

He pulls his fish traps from the water and thinks about which direction to take: further along the coast (roughly south) or back to the river and in the opposite direction (north)? The latter may take him towards the area where his meteorite was being taken. He still feels that it's too soon for that. At the same time, he still thinks that he needs to observe humans while he's small and thus more capable of sneaking in somewhere.

In the end, he decides to travel further away from the river. It's a gamble but one worth taking.

Being in the open and not having to worry about scaring fish from his traps, he doesn't mask his mental presence any more. It scares away prey but also any animals that might want to bother him. He doesn't have to fear going on empty stomach, there are sporadic colonies of oysters in the sea.

The dragon's gamble pays off more than a week later. He hopes so at least. There's something stuck in the sand. A long but light object (a canoe). There's a stench of a corpse coming from it.

He creeps closer and sees that there's indeed a dead body inside. Well, more like a skeleton. There's some vermin crawling over it but there's not much left to eat. The dragon examines the remains. Judging by their state, the boat has been there for several weeks. It's still in good shape.

Closer examination reveals more things about the dead guy. First, the probable cause of death was a small, thin dart. It couldn't possibly kill the man alone so it was probably poisonous. He can't detect any traces of any poison now though, rain and sun took care of that. Second, judging by the shape of the man's skull, he was different from the man with the sword. He didn't see the skull of the man with the sword but he saw his face. Maybe they belonged to two different races?

There's no means of propelling (a paddle) in the boat. The man probably dropped it when he died. If he has been carried there by the currents, then the dragon could backtrack those to where the canoe's voyage started.

The dragon frees the boat from the sand and rolls it over so the remains spill out. He inspects the canoe and it seems to be in passable shape. It could use some maintenance but he has no means of doing it.

He's more concerned about how's he going to propel the vessel. He could forget about the boat and swim but that would take ages. In the end, there's only one viable option - his own wings. He ventures inland and collects long, firm grasses. He makes two short, thin ropes of those.

He pushes the boat in the water. After a bit of experimentation, he finds a spot where he needs to stand. He ties the ropes there, making makeshift stirrups for his feet.

The dragon flaps his wings and rides the boat away from the beach. Extending his senses, he reads the movements of water. Before too long, he finds the current which brought the canoe there. He can see it as clearly as a human would see a road. Alas, it's not the time to backtrack it yet. He returns to the land and waits.

He spends next few days eating and collecting some kind of a fruit which grows on nearby trees. It dries up nicely so he can take it with him. He doesn't have to worry about water - he doesn't need much of it to begin with and, as he finds out, he can drink salt-water with no problem. He practices steering the boat once. Throughout the whole time, he observes birds (which look a loot like seagulls) circling above the coastline.

The right moment finally arrives. Judging by the birds and waves, the wind blows in the right direction. He sets out once more. He spreads his wings wide like a sail and lets the wind to carry him. He tries to stick to an edge of the current so he doesn't have to fight against it all the time. Being on a deep sea and not knowing what kind of animals he can encounter, he decides to mask his presence for most of the time. He can't do that when he's sensing the sea current though.

About a day later, this comes to bite him. He expands his senses (and his aura) to check if he's still on course. Deep under him, there's a shark just at edge of his range. They sense each other's presence. Just like with the wolves, the shark reacts in a way opposite to herbivores. Moreover, a shark has got a small and primitive brain, virtually incapable of being afraid or intimidated.

The shark swims toward the canoe. The dragon retracts his aura and changes direction. After a few moments he changes it back. The shark doesn't know where the threat is but he becomes interested in the canoe.

After the beast swims right under the canoe and rocks the boat, the dragon decides to do something about the threat. He can't risk the canoe getting damaged. He expands his senses once more and takes a good look at the shark. Now he knows what needs to be done - there is a way to make it run.

The sharks swims towards the source of the offending aura. The dragon jumps of his boat and glides a short distance before plunging into the sea. The shark follows, leaving the boat alone. The dragon turns at his enemy, retracts his aura, and awaits. At the last moment, he evades and hooks onto the shark's back with his claws. The shark goes crazy, trying to shake off the little troublemaker.

The dragon opens his senses again and focuses them on the animal under him. Yes, the nerves in the nose. He climbs forward, using his claws. Finally, he reaches the front and stabs him right in the nerve bundle. The shark is almost paralyzed by pain. The dragon drops from him and watches as the shark retreats at full speed, leaving clouds of blood behind.

The dragon surfaces and looks around. The canoe is some distance away but not as far as he feared. Moreover, he's closer to the current and further against it than the canoe. He lets it carry him for a while before he starts swimming perpendicularly to it to intercept the boat.

He sails for two more days. The current turns slightly for the whole time and the wind shifts as well. He's forced to sail more and more diagonally to the direction of the wind.

He he sees a small dot on the horizon. Unfortunately, it turns out that it can't be his destination - it's just a small, rocky island. There's a lot of nesting birds but no plants. Still, he decides to stop there because the current seems to be veering off and the wind isn't going to last forever either. He secures the boat and rests. He makes sure to stay hidden from the birds.

He swims out next day to scout the current and plan his next course of action. He finds out that the current splits into two smaller ones in the area (or, from the dragon's perspective, joins with the other branch into a bigger one). That's good, because his route is still clear - against the current. The wind isn't favorable for his new direction so he waits.

His supply of dry fruit runs out so he starts preying on bird eggs. He can't relay on this source of food - the birds will notice that there's a predator on the island. He isn't fast enough to catch fish and there's nothing there to build fishing traps from. Fortunately he finds some edible cucumber-like creatures on the sea floor.

On fourth day of waiting, a dead calm comes. He knows that he can't stay on the island forever. After giving it some thought, the dragon decides to continue in his voyage. He just needs to rely on his own muscles instead of the wind.

He lowers his canoe on the water again and flaps his wings. It's slower than being propelled by a wind in his back but he moves. The dragon wonders how much further the island of the dead man could be.

After four days of keeping a steady speed for most of the time, he recapitulates his situation. He made some progress but he has no food and he doesn't want to leave the boat for long and risk loosing it. There's still no wind. However, he spots a dark line on horizon behind him next morning. After a few hours, he sees that it is a storm.

He stops flapping his wings and rests. The storm is moving towards him. The dragon is unsure what to do. He never saw a storm on a sea but he has some idea of what it might be like. There's only one option: he has to try to ride it out.

The storm reaches him and he attempts to catch wind in a way which would enable him to stay in front of it. Alas, the storm is faster than him and it swallows him up eventually. There are big waves around him, each of them much bigger than his boat. It also rains heavily. His boat fills with water and sinks.

The dragon untangles his feet quickly and tries to continue without his boat. It's very difficult to keep his heading. He can't really sail because he can't keep his wings above water. What he attempts to do is to jump from a wave to wave, using the strong winds to carry him. He doesn't have much much luck with that. Strong gusts of wind keep slamming him aside. He barely manages not to get carried in a wrong direction.

He's tired and hungry, he isn't making any progress, and his boat is gone. There's no point in staying on the surface any longer. He submerges and swims towards the sea floor.

He makes an interesting discovery. There's another sea current there. It's some distance away from the first one and it's much deeper. What's important is that it goes in the opposite direction than the upper one. The dragon wonders if he should use it to carry him. The problem is, if he enters the second one, the first one will be out of his range. The dragon doubts that the two currents run parallel throughout the entire sea (or an ocean).

He finds something to eat first. Afterwards, he enters the second stream and rests.

A quarter a day later, he surfaces again and sees that the storm is gone. He swims in a direction where the original current should be. It's farther away than before. That confirms his suspicion that the currents are diverging.

There's only one thing to do and that's to swim. As before he needs to keep check on the current which brings risks, especially with the canoe gone. He attempts to make his aura as subtle and non-threatening as possible.

He still manages to attract attention. It starts when he hears a splash some distance behind him. He turns around but he doesn't see anything. Then he notices some strange sound waves hitting his body under the water. He retracts his aura.

In a short while, he's surrounded by a group of dolphins. He can see that they aren't fish and guesses that they are mammals actually. They jump around him and observe him as he swims. It seems like they aren't hostile, just curious. The dragon contemplates whether it's a good thing to have such company. The dolphins don't seem to be afraid of anything in the area. He wonders what would they do if a shark came along. Outsmart it, probably. He doesn't dare to examine them like he did with the shark but he estimates that their cranial capacity is quite large when compared to humans. He attempts to ignore them and swims on. The dolphins follow him, swimming in circles and making funny figures as if to rub his slowness in his face.

A time comes when he needs to check on the stream again. He thinks about actually swimming there but he can't afford such a waste of time and energy. He extends his senses, trying to be as subtle as possible. The dolphins get excited. Perhaps this is the confirmation they have been waiting for. Some of them get close to him and nuzzle him with their noses. Oh joy.

A few of them separate and when they return, one of them approaches him. He opens his mouth and expels a dead fish. Obviously, it's meant for him. The dragon finds it strange to eat something that was in a mouth of another creature. However, he doesn't wish to offend and he hasn't eaten a fish since the village.

Sensing an opportunity, he tries to use his aura to convey his intentions. Perhaps the dolphins will help him by pulling him along with them. No such luck. Either they don't understand or they don't want to understand. To be honest, they actually start slowing him down at a certain point by constantly trying to play with him. He tries to decipher the acoustic signals they use to talk to each other but he doesn't make any progress on that.

Another school of dolphins appears after some time. They don't seem to be in playful mood. Moreover, they send acoustic signals which sound like warnings. Are they on their territory? His "friends" react by positioning themselves behind the dragon.

The dragon can't believe his situation. He ate their fish and now he's expected to fight for them. He thinks about the events leading up to this point. Did the dolphins know where was he headed? If so, why didn't they leave when they entered someone else's turf? Also, the way they have been slowing him down from that moment on was quite suspicious.

The dragon makes his aura threatening again and focuses it on the "enemy". They don't run, nor are they angered. They are cautious. Some of them clap their jaws. Since a battle is imminent anyway, the dragon uses his senses to examine one of the opposing dolphins.

The two schools clash and the dragon is bearing the brunt of the attack. No blood is drawn, they all just punch each other. Perhaps they don't wish to attract sharks while they fight? In the end, the dragon's group emerges as victorious. They pursue their competition, leaving two badly bruised comrades behind.

As the dragon continues in his journey, he berates himself. What is he doing there? He didn't come there to observe animals being calculative. If he had wanted that, he could have stayed in the very area where he hatched and observe the wolf pack!

The two injured dolphins keep following him. From time to time, they make ultrasonic signals. The dragon is barely able to hear responses from the rest of the school. Those responses grow stronger after a while. It seems like the pursuers are returning.

The dragon is surrounded by his "friends" again. Then the other dolphins arrive. The dragon thinks for a moment that they have brought reinforcements. Then he realizes that it's actually two independent schools. They aren't reinforcements, they are allies!

He prepares for another battle when something unexpected happens. His friends shoot away and leave him behind to slow the enemies down. Unbelievable. A dolphin he punched earlier claps his jaws at him.

The dragon barely manages to escape into depths. The dolphins don't follow him there. They do need air after all. The dragon notes a lesson: Don't trust anybody, don't get involved. He's going to break that rule one day, even though he can't imagine himself doing such a thing yet.

Slowly and surely, he makes his progress. To keep a low profile, he doesn't use his sixth sense to keep a track on the current but rather swims right under it. The deep sea doesn't prove that dangerous after all, once he adapts. The smartest species around are dolphins and whales and those aren't hostile to him and don't dive too deep. Sharks are dangerous foes and they are highly evolved but they can't match his wits (nor are they able to outsmart a couple of dolphins).

After considerable time, he reaches his destination. He spots a canoe first. He swims underwater and observes it carefully. They seem to be fishermen. He follows the boat when it departs. They lead him to an island.

Cursory reconnaissance proves that it's truly the home of the dead man in the canoe. Most men are armed by blowguns. That's what they used to kill the man when he was... escaping for some reason? They seem to be quite primitive when compared to what he has seen of humans so far. There are no stone structures, just wooden huts. Fishing seems to be their main source of food. However, there seems to be some primitive, small time agriculture as well.

He also notes that humans have two genders, just like he has always assumed. He has assumed the very same about his own kind from the very beginning but it seems to him that this trait is quite defining when it comes to humans and their interactions. Then again, he has never seen a dragon society nor does he have any confirmation at this point that there's one in the universe.

The dragon is more than satisfied with what he has found. As a matter of fact, such a primitive micro-society is a good place to observe humans and start learning about them. The most important thing is to not be seen. He doesn't fear their blowguns but his discovery would ruin his project.

A month of covert observation reveals that they have a simple but strict code of behaviour. As a limited population living in a limited space, there's really no other choice. Some rules are designed to prevent inbreeding and bringing chaos into bloodlines while others serve to prevent parasitism. Punishment for infractions of most of the rules is death. However, because they can't afford to waste lives, each death must count. Hence, all executions are drastic and painful. Everybody must watch. Considering that the dragon saw only one execution during his first month there, it's probably an effective deterrent. The people seem savage and brutal but it's necessary for their survival.

The dragon also learns bits and pieces of their language. It would be faster if he used his aura to get a better read on people while they are talking but he doesn't wish to make the natives suspicious. It seems like it's going to take some time.

He can't wait to see what sort of new things is he going to learn about the little society and about lives and practices of its individual members. Despite the primitiveness of the tribe, he doesn't think that other humans will be that different.


	4. Midnight Sun

Midnight Sun

Bella opened her eyes and sat up sharply. She looked around.

"Welcome back," greeted her Jasper.

He was sitting on a chair next to her cot. He held a notebook and a pencil. It seemed like he was in a middle of work when Bella woke.

She noticed that it was quiet all around. Too quiet.

"Where's everybody?" she asked.

"Edward's on patrol and Alice is in her day job. As for Rose and Emmett, well..."

He pointed with his thumb. Rose and Emmett were lying on the floor on beach mats.

"They are turning!" she exclaimed. "When? Why?"

"Well, about a day after you started, the rest of us had a meeting. The bottom line was that you and Edward being able to do more work wasn't going to help us much unless Emmett and Rose were similarly upgraded. And since your change was progressing the same way as Edward's was..."

"Huh," murmured Bella as she processed this. "I didn't think that Rose was willing to give her human life up. Think about what she's going to miss out on now."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Like having children. Isn't that what most women want? Not me, obviously."

Jasper stared back at her.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," he replied finally. "Don't women need, you know, a boyfriend for that kind of things? And you know, do all sorts of unsavory stuff with that boyfriend to get, you know, encumbered?"

"Point taken. What about you and Alice? Are you planning something similar?"

"Well, someone needs to stay human, at least for now. Also, the two of us don't really need to change. Rose can handle texturing as well, Alice will just provide artworks. And me, I'm kind of afraid that the change might impair my imagination."

"True."

"However, if there are people out there who want us dead, then we might have no choice."

There was a moment of silence.

"So, do you want to get to work right away?" asked Jasper.

"It's not like I'm going to forget what I want to implement. I'll get to it later, after I discuss it with the rest of you. However, I want to try something else. Give me a differential equation example. A hard one."

Jasper furrowed his eyebrows but he did as he was asked. He went over to a computer and searched for: difficult differential equations examples. Once he found something particularly scary, he moved the window down so the solution wasn't visible.

"Here," he announced and turned the monitor.

"That's easy," snorted Bella and told him the solution straight from her head.

"Wow. I've never really learned how to solve these."

Because they didn't know when was Edward coming back, they started to discus Bella's DEVS idea.

"Here's the thing," argued Jasper. "You can't make a high fidelity simulation of a world for this kind of a game. Because in the real world, you've got the chaos theory and the butterfly effect and other things like that. Can you imagine a tiny action of a player completely overturning the course of events somewhere else? We can't possibly implement such a thing because it's infeasible from a technical point of view."

"Do you see butterfly effects with your naked eyes in your everyday life?" shot Bella back. "Maybe I misspoke before my change - DEVS is not a simulator in the way you understand it. It's just a methodology which tells us how to make DEVS models. Think about it like a declarative programming language. Then it's only up to us what kind of a model are we going to build. A volatile one can contain butterfly effects which can change its entire state in a single re-computation. We are going to have a more stable one where side events can create localized ripples but those won't progress far. In the end, we'll have a more organic feel of the events around the player. As for the player's failures, either direct or indirect, the model can try to recover from them and if it fails, it's game over."

"So, you'll make some declarative language for Emmett and he'll use it to create a model which will be loaded into your machine at a beginning of a new game."

"Rather not, what we have already should suffice. It will enable us to insert new data into the model in run-time. Also, I don't want to introduce another language. Not that Emmett wouldn't be able to handle it but we will probably like some community content later on, right?"

"Maybe. We'll see how people like it."

When Edward returned, he found Bella working on a computer and Jasper drawing some storyline diagrams in his notebook.

"Are you doing OK?" he asked Bella.

"You've been through this so you know the answer already, I think," retorted Bella. "Do you've got something to report?"

"You bet. They've sent another."

"You saw another drone?" asked Jasper.

"No. But I ran across its scent trail. I believe the drone is spying on the Cullens."

"Do you think they are in danger?" wondered Bella.

"Possibly," confirmed Edward. "Maybe they are waiting for us to contact them or vice versa."

"That would suggest that they can't detect the means of communication we have utilized so far," concluded Bella.

"Can you two take the drone out?" proposed Jasper after a moment of pondering.

"If we can attack in a coordinated manner, yes," avowed Edward and pulled an USB stick from his pocket.

"This again?" exclaimed Bella.

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it. It's a different virus though - freezing instead of crashing."

"How do we know that it will work?" doubted Jasper. "What if they took precautions?"

"Why would they? They probably don't know how the first one was destroyed. Maybe they think that it malfunctioned and destroyed itself. However, we'll take a laptop and see if those things have wi-fi."

"Very well then. Let's do it."

Edward asked Bella to give him her USB stick. While he was formatting it and cloning his own onto it, he asked, "Should we discuss Bella's idea with DEVS before we depart?"

"Well, Emmett is incapacitated at the moment and he's the one who will end up using the system, so I'll guess we'll wait for later," replied Bella. "However, Jasper and I have talked about it and he isn't opposed against the idea so far."

"So far," emphasized Jasper.

"Are you going to implement it from scratch?"

"Well, I found an interesting open source implementation. However we can't use it."

"Why?"

"It's in C++ and it doesn't support run-time building of the model. Also, it was created by an university professor to be used in his students' school projects."

"I see."

Jasper wasn't paying much attention. He was thinking about the main storyline and ways of bringing the player to its beginning. So far, he didn't have any ideas.

"Very well, we are prepared," announced Edward and handed Bella her stick back.

"OK, good luck," replied Jasper automatically, his mind on the project.

"Let's go," whispered Bella and they left.

"By the way, what are you going to do about your job?" she asked when they were out on a street.

"I made a little charade for them. First, I pretended to work while being sick and finished the issue they e-mailed me about. A week-worth amount of code total. Then I went silent and Alice stopped there and told them that I got worse and that my doctor forbid me from even looking at a computer screen."

"Are you still going to resign?"

"It's the only option. I wouldn't be able to explain to them why I look differently. However, I'll finish everything I've ever worked on."

"That will make them miss you even more," commented Bella with a grin on her face. "You are so evil!"

"I know, I know."

Back in the basement, Jasper struggled. He knew what he needed to do: Stop seeing the story as a single line but rather like a string woven of many fibers. Moreover, those little fibers weren't static, they were dynamic. That was difficult. He understood the concept but bringing it into reality was something different. The problem was in maintaining an organic feeling to it all. Many open world games had a problem with feeling like a set of incohesive modules. It was definitely something he was going to discuss with Emmett.

He stole a glance at Emmett and Rose. He remembered that both Edward and Bella had utilized their changing time quite usefully. Maybe it would be same with him, maybe he would finish the "screenplay".

Jasper shook his head. Such thoughts were premature. He returned to his sketching.

* * *

The dragon watches the village burn from a mountain in the center of the island. There's a crude black ship floating in a bay. Raiders are all around the place, killing indiscriminately. As it's almost evening, the reddening sunlight complements the flames and creates a picturesque vista.

The dragon has been observing the village for last two planetary cycles. Yet, he feels no special kinship or desire to intercede. He's an observer, not a participant. Besides, there isn't anything he can do.

Or is there? He hears people running in the jungle. Two of them. Closer inspection reveals that it's a local woman running from a raider armed with a wooden baton. Perhaps the dragon could allow himself one strike. He has never killed a human before and he would like to test his ability to do so.

Moving from tree to tree, the dragon moves over the pursuer. His upper body is now proportionally larger and stronger so being airborne is not such a problem as before.

The women doesn't have a line of sight on her pursuer at the moment so the dragon descends on his victim. His talons pierce his neck a split of a second before his legs make contact with his lower back. The man dies choking on his own blood, unable to call for help. That's good. While the dragon has grown, he still isn't strong enough to face multiple armed humans in direct combat.

He doesn't bother with dragging the corpse away and hiding it because he knows it would take too long (not to mention that it would also leave an easy to follow track). The man's comrades aren't far away so the dragon takes to trees again and makes himself scarce.

He returns to his previous observation post. The mountain creates a long shadow reaching all the way to water. That's his cover. He dives from a cliff and glides with an occasional beat of his wings. Even if somebody looked up, he would be hard to spot against the darkening sky.

However, if anybody did see him, he would possibly wonder how the dragon manages this at all. Yes, he started from a high point, and yes, his wings do look like they can be used for gliding. The problem is that his descent ought to be much steeper. Instead, his rate of loosing altitude is rather mild. Furthermore, there's no counter wind. It seems that his ability which helps him to stay airborne has strengthened.

He flies over a beach and once the water under him is deep enough to conceal him, he folds his wings and drops head-first into the waves. He swims underwater to the ship and attaches himself to it by his claws.

Some time after sunset, the ship raises the anchor and deploys oars. The dragon guesses that they intended to stay overnight originally but finding one of their men killed by an unknown animal changed their mind. They row for a while before catching wind. The ship heads roughly west, back to the continent.

The dragon chances sneaking above water. He hears voices. He recognizes some of them as natives from the island. He knows their language. The raiders always bark at them sharply. He doesn't know the language, obviously, but he assumes that it's an order to shut up. Sometimes, there's crying followed by similar barks.

The dragon takes a quick peek through an oar opening. The natives are being tied to oar-posts by ropes and leather cuffs. It seems like the raiders can't afford bronze chains.

There's a native who stands out. He isn't bound and the dragon doesn't recognize him from the village. He believes he recognizes his dialect though. He's from another tribe from another island. The two tribes belong to the same ethnic and linguistic branch. They engage in trade sometimes.

The man speaks to the captives and tries to explain the situation. He tells them that if they behave, they will be able start new lives once they reach the city. This catches the dragon's interest. He wants to see this city and learn more about it.

Most of the crew go to sleep once all captives are secured. Guards remain behind, prepared to kill anybody who would fiddle with the ropes. The man from another village starts teaching the captives basics of their captors' language. Mostly simple commands like forward, backward, raise oars, and lower oars. The dragon listens intently.

At dawn, the dragon retreats underwater. He tries to listen through the hull throughout the day but without much success. The only event of importance is when a villager is thrown overboard. Maybe he didn't heed the interpreter's advice to behave. The dragon considers eating the unlucky guy briefly but he isn't willing to take the risk of letting go of the hull.

When he emerges again that evening, he feels like he has missed a lot. The captives are more advanced in the new language than him. Moreover, only a very short "lesson" is held before the captives go to sleep as they are too tired from a day of rowing.

The dragon has a dilemma. On one hand, he doesn't wish to do anything that would interfere with the ship - because he wants to reach the city the interpreter was talking about. On the other hand, he can't ignore this opportunity to observe the inter-human mechanics unfolding on the ship, especially when two different cultures are involved. He can't resist and doesn't retreat underwater next morning.

He thinks he can stay out of sight but he fails. A cook comes to a window on the side of the ship on which the dragon is hiding and dumps a bucket of garbage in the ocean. He spots the dragon and drops the bucket in shock. While the cook is surprised, the dragon reacts instantly. He hooks the man by his claw and pulls him overboard, wounding him mortally at the same time. The man manages to let out a short scream before hitting the water. The dragon retreats underwater quickly.

The cook's scream was heard and his absence is discovered. It leads to quite a commotion. The ship stops and there's an investigation.

The captain suspects that one of the captives is responsible. But how can that be when they are all tied to their posts? There's a head count but the raiders aren't sure how many slaves are there supposed to be. The interpreter is suspected as well. After all, he's got more latitude than the others.

Executions start. Three bodies are dumped overboard before the men urge the captain to stop wasting their profits. The interpreter keeps repeating that the captives say that they know nothing about the cook. The captain calms down finally but the interpreter is chained along the others.

The dragon stays out of sight in daytime after this incident. He has learned a valuable lesson - one's actions do have consequences.

They finally reach the city. According to the dragon's orientation sense, it's far to the south from the place where he hatched but probably on the same continent judging by all he knows.

The city is overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. It's relatively big, old, and full of people. It has Sumerian-like look and feel but without any significant landmarks such as fortifications or palaces. The dragon feels appreciation for the amount of work it takes to build something like that, especially when it withstands a test of time afterwards. However, the city is also dirty and it stinks of rot and other things.

After thorough but quick consideration, the dragon decides to tag along with the ship all the way into the city's harbor. The ships lands and the slaves are offloaded.

When darkness falls, the dragon emerges from the water and climbs a mast. Main streets and passages are lit sparsely and light is also coming from many windows but everything else is in shadow. What's most important, the roofs are completely dark.

The dragon glides to a nearest building and lands as softly as possible. Keeping to darkness, he observes the citizens. They are like the city they live in - old but dirty. However, the locals aren't what the dragon is interested in at the moment. He seeks where the slaves are imprisoned.

They are kept in large cages in a district dedicated to slave trade. At this time of day, all is quiet there. Slaves are trying to sleep, guards are patrolling. There are two men talking in low voices. One of them is showing the other a roll of parchment. After a few moments, the dragon understands that the first man has conducted a cataloging of the new slaves. He leads the second man to a cage which is filled by people estimated not to fetch a good price next day. It's aside from all the others.

The second man dismisses the first one and then sends an aide with a message. Some time later, a wagon pulled by a donkey arrives. It's escorted by a group of guards but they don't look like the city ones or the ones working for slavers. The slaves in the cage are woken quietly and moved to the wagon. They are scared because they have no idea what's going to be done with them but they have no way of knowing whether it's anything out of ordinary.

The slaver is paid and the wagon leaves. The dragon follows. The destination is a two-story building in one of the worse parts of the city. It's larger than most houses around but not too large. The dragon can spot through windows that it's filled with more people like the ones escorting the wagon.

However, the cargo isn't meant for them. The wagon pulls in a back alley behind the establishment. There is an inconspicuous entrance to a cellar and the captives are led in there. The dragon surmises that the buyer doesn't wish the slaves to be seen entering the building.

The dragon contemplates what to do. He can't go in there, that's for sure. It's too risky and there's no telling what's down there. Instinctively, he makes sure that his aura is pulled in as tightly as possible.

He's got a strange vague feeling that this is important. It's barely palpable but it seems connected to his unknown connection with this world. Maybe this is some kind of a threat? Another possibility is that he's imagining it, as strange as it would be for him.

Seeing no other course of action, the dragon retreats and observes from distance. Nothing happens for the rest of the night. He flees at first sign of dawn.

The area is arid but far from lifeless. There are some rocky hills nearby so he hides there. He catches a few desert rodents while he waits for evening.

When night falls again, the dragon stakes the building out. Alas, nothing comes in or out of the back entrance for the whole night. The same goes for the front entrance, with the exception of the occupants of the building.

The dragon contemplates this. It's logical to assume that if those people want to keep their activities from public knowledge, they won't use a single entrance. What if the cellar is connected to a larger underground? After all, the city does have a rudimentary sewer system which is probably mostly dry.

True enough, he finds a sewer exit at the coast, right outside the city's premises, close to the coast. A closer look reveals wagon tracks and suspicious smells. He doesn't dare to venture in though.

A few hours before sunrise, a wagon arrives from the city. The same one which transported the slaves two nights ago. However, it's manned by one guy only.

His buddies arrive soon enough from the sewer. They carry several dead bodies. Once those are loaded, the wagon heads away. Half of the men accompany it while the rest returns to the city.

The dragon follows the wagon to a ravine. It's quite a distance so it's morning when they get there. The dragon has to be careful to avoid detection.

They stop at a place covered by ashes and charred pieces of something. There's a smell of burned bodies all around. Those pieces are probably body parts.

The men start offloading the corpses. The dragon recognizes them as the slaves from the island. It seems like they have been drained of blood.

They make a large fire and start chopping the corpses to pieces and feeding those into the fire. Once all the bodies are burning, the men take pickaxes and spades and start enlarging a nearby ditch. They must have dug it previous night. It's empty at the moment but the dragon wagers that they'll bury the ashes and unburned pieces of bones in there once everybody in the last group is processed, whatever the "processed" means.

As the fire starts to dwindle, the men leave. However, they leave one behind to guard the area, just in case. That's the dragon's chance. He sneaks behind the man, leaps on his back, and chokes him out. After he checks his vitals, he searches him and binds his hands.

The dragon turns his attention to the burning remains. There's nothing to be found by direct search of those. He takes a look around and when he sees that the coast is clear, he lets his aura unfold and touch the charred pieces. He recoils back after a moment. There's some dark residue. He doesn't know what it is but it feels bad. And dangerous. Certainly out of his league.

He decides to leave the area. He pauses over the captured man. Should he kill him and add him to the fire or should he try to drag him along for later interrogation? The man is heavier than the dragon which means a necessity to drag the man which in turn means easily followable tracks.

There's no helping it, he has to know what he's running away from. His lack of humanoid features (like arms) makes it difficult but he manages to roll the man on his back, raise him to a sitting position, and hoist his upper torso on his back. Hooking his fingers under the man's arms, he starts to drag him away slowly. He heads further down the ravine, away from the city.

After covering a small distance, the man starts to wake up from his legs being scratched by rocks. The dragon drops his load and positions himself so that he's between the man and the city. The man takes a moment to get his bearings and struggles to stand up with his hands bound. Then he sees the dragon. After a momentary freeze, he screams and starts running. As expected, he does the dragon's work for him and runs the intended way. The dragon lets him think for the time being that loosing him is possible.

Once they are out of the ravine and in open terrain, the man tries to veer back to the city. The dragon tries to herd him in the "right" direction but with only partial success. At a convenient spot, he decides to end the game and unfolds his wings. He catches up with his prey in a few jumps and descends on him. The man tumbles to the ground.

He tries to crawl away for a few moments. He stills when he feels the dragon's sharp talons on his throat. As seconds tick by, he realizes that he's still alive and that the strange creature isn't going to kill him any time soon. By pushing him, the dragon makes the man to sit up and then he walks in front of him. The man realizes that the dragon is probably sentient.

The dragon has to give it to the man, he isn't as afraid as one would expect him to be. The fact that the dragon keeps his aura pulled in contributes to this greatly but he wagers that the man possesses knowledge (or suspicion at least) of something more dangerous. It's also the reason why he needs to interrogate him.

That represents a small problem. The dragon knows much of the language of the island people and basics of the one used in the region. However, he can't speak and he doesn't know how to write (or read). He needs to find some other means of communication.

He starts by drawing a rough plan of the city. He clearly marks both entrances to the underground used by the traffickers. The man observes him in befuddlement. The dragon points at the one at the coast. The man doesn't understand. The dragon tries to convey his demand for information by mimicking human body language and, in limited fashion, facial expressions (his face is hard and scaly and he has almost no facial muscles) and he fails miserably. He points at the man's mouth to tell him that he wants him to speak but the man connects the gesture with "food" and "eat" rather than "speak".

"Do you want me to lead you there?" he asks finally and starts to stand up.

The dragon pulls him back down and shakes his head.

"Can you understand me?" continues the man. When he spoke before, he didn't really expect that.

The dragon nods.

"Do you want to kill me and eat me?" asks the man hopefully.

The dragon shakes his head. He doesn't intend to eat the man.

"Look, I'm not a right guy to talk to," pleads the man. "Over here," he points at the sewer with his foot, "are some smart people who can help you. Let me take you there."

He starts to stand again and the dragon stops him from doing so like before. It's becoming clear that a more direct approach is needed. He unfolds his aura and lets it touch the man who starts screaming immediately. The dragon leaps at him, pushes him to the ground, and forces his mouth shut.

Next, he does something he has practiced only on animals so far. It's similar to what happened with the goblin high priest but that was subconscious and required great dedication from the subject. He focuses his aura on the man's brain and makes contact with his mind. He starts pushing images of what he's interested in - the people who are led underground and return as corpses drained of blood, the unknown evil living under the city, and so on. The man is unable to respond but the dragon catches a few impressions from his mind. He knows most of it already. There's something dark and evil lurking there and they need blood of people to survive. The traffickers serve them.

The dragon doesn't know whether the man ever came in contact with those creatures or whether he simply fails to read more detailed information from him but he wagers that both is true. After all, he does look like a lower ranking member of the organization. It doesn't matter though because the man passes out from the stress. The dragon pokes him a few times with no result.

Well, it doesn't seem like he'll learn anything else from him. He can't let him go either so he snaps his neck. Dragging his corpse isn't easy but he manages to get to the sea before the end of the day. The man's comrades are never going to find out what happened to him. They are most probably going to think that he lost his nerve and ran away. The dragon himself has no intention of returning to the region in foreseeable future.

As the camera pans to a picturesque horizon shot of the sea and coastline, a voice-over (recorded in a bathroom like Connery's words before Highlander) sounds over subtle music playing in background:

**"And so the dragon wisely avoided confrontation with a coven of undead blood-drinkers without them or their human thralls even learning about his existence. Failure to do so would have surely resulted in his death. They were, without a doubt, the most dangerous enemy he had encountered." **

* * *

Jasper chuckled internally. The irony of introducing vampires into the game wasn't lost on him. He had no clear idea yet how exactly were they going to look but he was certain that he was going to go for creepy and ugly.

His earlier thought wasn't leaving his mind yet. He wanted to accommodate his friends and help them create the fully interactive experience they wanted to create. However, if he was asked to describe his calling in one word, he would choose "storyteller". A bad play-through of the game by a gamer unable to appreciate its qualities would result in a bad story.

Another thought occurred to him then. If the game was successful, he could start a follow up project - an independent animated movie based on his idea of a proper play-through. Such thoughts were premature though. After all, their lives were in danger.


	5. Fifty Shades of Gameplay

Fifty Shades of Gameplay

"You know, I think it's a matter of combining random, generic events with important, unique ones," mused Edward. He and Bella were talking about some details of how was Emmett going to implement Jasper's ideas using the means created by the two of them.

"How exactly do you see that?" she asked, not taking her eyes from a window through which she saw Carlisle giving a lecture.

"Imagine that you're playing a soldier in a war simulation using our engine. There are DEVS sub-automatons which simulate high-level story elements, like the beginning of the war, decisions of generals and politicians, and so on. Then there are low-level parts which simulate the ordinary substance of the gameplay - enemy encounters, warfare, and such. Now, let's say that certain classes of these parts can send output signals which can be accepted by the high-level ones."

"Like an ordinary enemy encounter serving as a trigger for starting the war?"

"Yes. A lighting of a fuse, in the real world language. Of course, such a signal will be sent over and over again for the rest of the game but it will be discarded."

"Or it can be accepted by an automaton created for the sole purpose of handling these stray signals."

"Yeah, it all depends on Emmett."

"There's something that bugs me though," remarked Bella.

"What?"

"This sounds way too much like what happens in ordinary games. You know, you do something and the story continues."

"Again, it will hinge a lot on Emmett but I believe the system will make it possible to give it an entirely different feel and make it more realistic. Think about Stanislav Petrov and the 1983 incident. That day, the survival of our entire civilization rested on his shoulders. Any kind of outcome was possible. And he was just an ordinary man, not a mighty dragon sent by his mother to actually guard an entire planet."

"I guess you've got a point."

The class ended then.

"He's on move," reported Bella.

"Let's get rolling!" declared Edward.

* * *

The dragon is doing something he really shouldn't. He himself knows that and displays this knowledge occasionally by stopping and shaking his head or making a remark in his head. It has to be admitted, what he's doing is quite pathetic but what does it matter when no one sees him?

Not being seen is no longer as simple as it used to be. Standing upright, he's taller than any man already (though not yet twice as tall as most men). That makes it difficult to hide, at least when not in convenient terrains such as deep forests.

Alas, he has learned a few tricks to balance that out. For instance, he can change color of his scales and thus create a rudimentary camouflage. It's not something biological, it's more supernatural in the way it works.

Another useful skill is passive usage of his extrasensory sense. Before, he had to actively extend his aura if he wanted to use it. In other words, when he wanted to keep his presence hidden, he had to rely on his sight, hearing, and sense of smell. Now, he's able to passively sense vicinity of a sentient being.

And when it comes to spying - his current shameful activity, the best way to do it is not to do it in person. He's able to ensnare a small bird or a rodent in his mental aura and send it out to act as his eyes.

At the moment, he's using a little brown bird to spy on two young villagers from a village which the dragon has been observing for some time now. A while ago, they sneaked out into a forest, just like the dragon had seen them do several times before.

While his reasons for observing the village are the same as ever (learning more about human behavior), he has no in-universe reason to spy on this young man and his gal. Although, it's probably premature to call her "his". The dragon is quite sure that neither of them has got a permission to court the other and that they would both get a proper beating from their parents if they were seen.

He has to admit, relationships between people are more complex in this land. It's most certainly a long way from the customs of the first people he observed back on that island. And yet, their goals and desires seem to be same and any differences stem mostly from different circumstances and rules.

After some time of observing the two and listening to their conversation, the dragon's patience is rewarded. They step closer to each other and... they hold hands! The mission is accomplished and as they turn to return to the village, the dragon is about to release the bird. But before he does that, he spots something moving among trees.

His first thought is that it could be other villagers but he doesn't recollect any of them leaving in that direction. A moment later, he gets a better look and confirms that it's indeed a group of people. However, they aren't villagers, they look more like bandits. The dragon makes the bird fly to investigate.

There are three of them. One of them wears a crude leather armor and another one equally crude padded one. They are unwashed and rugged. All three of them carry primitive weapons like wooden clubs and spears. It seems like a strange coincidence but the couple was sneaking out of the village every other day so such a situation was bound to occur sooner or later.

The strangers spot the villagers and their leader gestures to one of the others to go around them. The young sweethearts do not see them yet so the dragon decides to intervene. The bird flies back to them and attempts to warn them by chirping. It doesn't sound very alarming, the gal even beams a smile at him. So he moves between them and the two approaching intruders. That's when they notice the danger and start running.

The two bandits start after them. The dragon makes the bird to fly straight at the leader. It causes only a momentary delay. Moreover, its survival instinct kicks in and the dragon looses connection with it.

There seems to be only two viable options. One is to forget the matter and leave the area before he gets seen. That is actually the most logical course of action. He owes nothing to those two villagers and he knows from personal experience that getting involved in anything complicates matters. In other words, there's no reason not to leave quietly and let the events unfold on their own.

At the same time, if the dragon did only things which were logical, he would be still hiding in that salt mine near the site of his hatching. So his other option is to be unwise and save those two villagers and possibly find out what is going on. Hopefully without being seen.

It would be an understatement to say that this course of action is ill-advised. Moreover, there's very little reason to take it. After all, he didn't help the villagers back on the island when slavers attacked. And yet, there's a certain difference (besides the dragon being grown up now). The society on the island was at the end of its development - it wasn't going any further and he was never going to see anything new there. On the other hand, the few budding settlements in the area are at the very beginning of their journey and there's no telling where the region may go. Perhaps it could be a worthy investment to make sure that this journey doesn't halt prematurely. The dragon is also intrigued by the cozy village on a subjective level.

There's actually a third option but it isn't very viable. He could try to influence the couple and guide them to safety. Alas, there's a few problems with that. It's probable that the subjects would be disoriented and confused by the sudden contact. Moreover, there are two of them while he can influence only one target, not to mention that he has never practiced such a thing on humans. The closest he has ever got to guiding anybody was when he was still in his egg. And lastly, he doubts that they would be able to save themselves even with his guidance.

This gives him an idea. He could theoretically use the mental contact to distract the attackers which should make it easier to dispose of them. He just has to make sure not to let them escape. He doesn't want anyone touched by him to roam around, especially not some random bandits.

There's no time to loose so the dragon emerges from his hideout. He's too big to unfold his wings in this forest so he runs. His scales are colored to match the colors of the forest but since he's on move, it doesn't do him any more good than good masking clothing and face paint would do to a human. Still, he manages to get behind the two pursuers without getting noticed.

Killing the one on the flank is easy. The one in front hears the noise and turns around. He's momentarily stricken by fear and awe. The dragon hits him by his aura so the man doesn't even try to run when the dragon charges at him.

The boy from the village hears the sound of the dragon stomping through the forest and looks around. The dragon drops to the ground quickly but the boy still sees enough to be distracted and stops. The girl notices this and looks around as well. The dragon senses the third bandit's position and helplessly observes as he cuts off the escape of the two youths.

"I've got them!" he calls at his comrades, not knowing that they are dead. He makes sure not to shout too loudly.

The villagers turn back towards him and the girl screams. The boy grabs her hand. With the bandit between them and the supposed safety of the village and with something unknown in the opposite direction, the boy decides to run away in a perpendicular direction and pulls the girl after him. The bandit is expecting that and before they gain speed, he whacks the girl over her leg. She falls down, almost pulling the boy with her. He turns around and prepares to fight the bandit, looking around for an improvised weapon.

"What's it going to be?" sneers the bandit. "Are you going to run and leave your gal here?"

The boy responds by picking up a stone. It's to big to be thrown or wielded in a fist and too small to be used for ramming but it's the only weapon around. Suddenly, his eyes flicks to a spot behind the bandit's right shoulder. The man notices it but he thinks that it's his pals. Then he hears footsteps which sound too big and heavy to be human. He glances back quickly and just like the other bandit, he's stupefied.

The boy uses this opportunity. Suddenly, the stone he's holding is more convenient than anything else. He brings it down on the back of the bandit's head.

It seems like he needn't have exposed himself such. All he had to do was to paralyze the bandit and the lad would do the rest. He retreats quickly but the girl still gets an eyeful of him. At least neither of them have seen him change colors, that would creep them out for sure.

In the meantime, the boy hits the bandit again. He drops the stone and stands up. The girl hugs him tightly. Observing from distance and carefully camouflaged, the dragon feels great satisfaction. This is even better than watching them hold hands.

The villagers look around but the dragon seems to be gone. The boy grabs the bandit's club and they resume their run back to the village. The dragon follows them through his passive sensing.

There's no need to finish the bandit, he's dead. Keeping an "eye" on the couple, he starts a perimeter run around the village. True enough, he finds two more scouts. He kills one of them and probes the other before disposing of him as well. There's a whole raiding party headed for the village. Which was also the last destination of the young couple before he lost contact.

Once again, the dragon has a choice to make. This time around, there's even less time to think about it. If he does nothing, than his previous investment will be rendered void. Moreover, those two can be captured and interrogated about the killed bandits. What if they spill the beans? It seems like he ought to take the chance and do something about the impending attack.

Decision made, the dragon makes his way to the side of the village from which the main attack is coming. There's no forest on that side. On one hand, that means that he can take flight and attack from the air. On the other hand, it means no cover for him. No kind of coloring will help him either.

When he reaches the position, he sees that the bandits are about to mount the attack already. That's no coincidence. He calculates that even if he had optimized all the previous events to best speed, he wouldn't have arrived much sooner. On the other hand, if he had tarried, he could have arrived too late to help.

The villagers themselves aren't idle either and they are marshaling whatever meager defenses they can. Either they have noticed the attackers by themselves or those two young villagers have warned them. It doesn't look like they have much chances of repelling the attack.

Well, there's only one course of action and no time to think about it. (If only he had an ability to go back in time and scout the area around the village instead of spying on the two youths!) Waiting would only complicate the situation, it's best to attack before the two sides clash. The dragon leaps from his cover among the trees and spreads his mighty wings. His gravity defying ability makes his take-off almost effortless.

The bandits are on move so he lets out a loud roar. In this particular situation, it serves as reliably as using a mental paralysis - both sides stop in their tracks and stare at the dragon with their mouths wide open. In a corner of his eye, the dragon can see only two people moving - the young couple he has saved earlier.

He gets in the range of the bandit ranks in about two seconds and unleashes his main aerial weapon - his breath. It's something he has been experimenting with recently. It isn't terribly powerful yet but a single attack run is all it takes to break the charge. The dragon disappears quickly in a forest on the opposite side but everyone has seen him already.

The villagers are as flabbergasted as the surviving bandits are panicked. The only exception are the dragon's young acquaintances from the forest. They run to the bandits while bellowing at the other villagers to join them. For a moment, the dragon fears that they will be left alone in their counter-attack but then two men follow after them. The dragon believes that they are their fathers which explains why they shout at them to return back. Other villagers join in afterwards. The dragon has an amusing thought that the young couple won't have a problem to get their parents' blessing to get married after such heroism.

There's no need for the dragon to attack again. Most bandits are on the run anyway. The villagers seem to have everything well in hand so he hunts down the escaping bandits. He doesn't want any of them to get out of there alive.

When all the bandits are dead, he returns to his hideout and ensnares another bird. He spends the rest of the day watching the villagers deal with the aftermath of the attack. The two young ones tell the others about their encounter with the dragon. The elders listen contemplatively, saying little. The general consensus is that the strange creature saved them all. Its motives are another question though.

Corpses of dead bandits are being found throughout the day. The villagers want them all burned so they won't attract wolves and other beasts. The dragon pities those who will be on that detail next day. The bodies are strewn over quite a large area and they won't smell nice. It also means that he can't stay near.

When night falls, he leaves his hideout and moves to a secondary one farther away from the village, just at the edge of his ability to control small animals. Next morning, he sends another bird to keep tabs on the events.

People keep pestering the young couple for details about the dragon, as if they all didn't get a good look at him during his attack. More and more corpses are being found and people are awed by the dragon's thoroughness and unforgivingness. Village elders claim that it was a punishment for attacking their village. The dragon's young friends shyly remark that maybe he simply didn't want to leave any witnesses (other than the village itself).

There's nothing more to be done - his continued presence would only complicate things. The dragon travels north, hoping that the fallout will be minimal. As he leaves, the already familiar voice narrates:

**"He realized perfectly well what a blunder he had made. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to regret saving my grandparents and all the other villagers. In later times, he admitted that an incident like such was simply waiting to happen. Does that mean that the string of unforeseen events which followed was inevitable?" **

The screen goes black for a moment and the narrator adds:

**"The first consequences came sooner than he had expected."**

The dragon is in a middle of nowhere. Far, far away from a nearest sentient soul. It's night. It's quite cold this far north so he has made a small campfire and is coiled around it. Mostly for the sake of comfort, as even most biting of frosts would merely make him sleepy. He's most likely going to have some soot marks on the scales on his belly but that's irrelevant.

Something catches his eye. A shooting star. A semi-bright streak across the night sky.

Semi-bright? That's not the only curious thing about it. It's trajectory doesn't match that of a falling rock. It dims as it slows down and disappears completely eventually.

Now the dragon is intrigued. He steps on the fire and observes the sky intently. Yes, there's a shape soaring across it. He can't see it but it blocks the stars. It's headed straight for him.

Before he can react, it impacts next to him. The shock-wave throws the dragon away. Before the dust clears away, he's grabbed by his throat like a goose and for the first time ever, he comes face to face with one of his own kind.

One of his own kind. Perhaps that's an exaggeration. The two of them are as alike as humans and goblins. The creature examining him seems alien to him. General shape and features are similar to his own (though the other dragon is much, much bigger). However, that's where the similarities seem to end. The other dragon's scales and hide are utterly black. He absorbs all light, not even a speck of shine can be seen on him. No ears can be seen at first glance and the eyes are covered by hide. Some details on his body seem like they are supposed to fulfill some special function, presumably in space, but it's unclear what that might be.

In next moment, the smaller dragon gets a taste of what is it like for humans to be subjected to his mental aura - the big dragon makes contact with him. The smaller dragon doesn't know if those other dragons have some kind of a language but it's obvious that he can't know it so it wouldn't make any sense for the other dragon to try to speak in it to him. Images and ideas assault his mind.

The reason for the visit is simple - the dragon was seen. To be precise, he was seen in public. Revealing one's existence to somebody you're going to kill anyway is acceptable, so is making contact with a trustworthy follower. However, putting oneself in broad display in front of an entire village is unacceptable. Moreover, the exposure was connected with a severe disruption of natural order of events. The raid would have severe consequences for the village but any survivors would have been the stronger for it. The smaller dragon tries to explain but the big one doesn't care. It doesn't matter who and why has seen him - he's there because he has been seen at all.

The small dragon would like to have so many questions. Where has the black dragon come from? Are there others of their kind? How many? Is his mother somewhere out there as well? Why was his egg sent to this world? Alas, the other dragon is all business and gives him no opportunity to project those questions.

The black dragon's visit has one purpose only - to advise him how to mitigate the situation. Luckily, the population of the planet is still in early stages of its development so the effects of the incident will be hopefully diluted by passage of time. Still, the situation needs to be approached with care. The first step should be a long-term retreat from events of this world - a hibernation. The dragon has gone to long sleeps before but never for longer than several years. The black dragon has something far longer in mind - a whole century of oblivion. When he wakes up, all people who are alive today will be dead.

His hibernation will be followed by a careful and tentative examination of the consequences of his rash actions. If any action is needed, it will need to be taken either without being seen or indirectly. The former is complicated by his increasing size. He may decide to perfect his chameleon trick but any progress will be offset by his growth. Anybody will be able to see such a large thing, even when it's masked.

Alas, there's another way working on an entirely different principle. It doesn't have this problem and even provides far better concealment - an absolute one. Moreover, it works perfectly while moving, no matter how quickly. The problem is, it's no parlor trick - it's a proper piece of sophisticated magic.

Magic - the young dragon has never seen or heard about such a thing. Sure, he has displayed certain supernatural talents and encountered (albeit only indirectly so far) some unnatural creatures but this is something different. For dragons (or for any serious magic practitioners), magic is a science. Perhaps the highest form of science of them all, because magic influences the very fundaments of reality. A technology can be developed to exploit a particular scientific principle to mimic a specific magical effect and perhaps even mimic it with far more power that any dragon could generate or channel but magical spells are composed of the very underlying key elements forming those scientific principles.

Because of this, magic can't be used instinctively like some other talents a dragon may develop. Besides having magical power, one also needs to know what he's doing. That includes both theory of magic and patterns forming concrete spells. Such things can be either discovered (which is time-consuming) or simply learned from someone or something.

Seeing that the young dragon has no knowledge of magic, the black dragon relays to him basics of a theory of magic and instructions for casting an invisibility spell. He can't instill the actual knowledge in him, it's more like giving him a book. The young dragon is going to need time to process the received information and then more time to practice his first spell.

He can understand already how the spell works though. It's so fail-proof because it's not an illusion - it's a protective ward. The user is separated from the rest of the world and is utterly undetectable by visual means. The price for this is that he can't influence the world around him directly. If he does that, the spell is broken and he becomes visible. For all intents and purposes, he's reduced to an observer. What a perfect alignment with what a proper dragon should be.

The black dragon sees that the young one is overwhelmed but there is one last point of business to be covered before he departs. They finalize the plan for what the young dragon should do once he wakes up. Once they are done, the black dragon requests a promise that he will do as they agreed. There's more than enough latitude in this promise and it seems almost pointless. The young dragon argues that he has no intention of betraying their agreement but the big one is adamant. It feels almost like a "slap over his wrist". He gives the promise and it feels very binding. The young dragon feels that he wouldn't be able to break it even if he tried.

His task concluded, the big dragon severs their connection and makes himself invisible. He hardly needs it thanks to his color and darkness of the night but perhaps he wanted to demonstrate. The smaller dragon can hear him flying north. His head still reeling from the ordeal, he has no strength to call after him and ask him more questions but he idly wonders whether he intends to fly all the way to the north magnetic pole and use the planet's magnetic field to make his ascend back to space easier. Shouldn't he rather do that at the equator?

He feels tired and he has something like a headache. The information he received needs time to settle before he can learn how to cast spells. He sets off in search for a suitable lair for his hibernation. In preparation for that, he gorges himself on game and drinks enough water.

He hides in a deep cavern system and barricades himself in. Placing magical alarms would be better but he doesn't know any yet. He falls asleep deeper than ever before and his mind wanders across his dream-scape as he processes the theory of magic.

As years pass outside, the narrator's voice returns:

**"What happened to him was almost cruel. For the first time, he was presented with an irrefutable proof that there are others of his kind and that they most probably form some kind of an interstellar civilization - not that I know what that means. And then it was all swept away and his questions remained unanswered. Such a thing would surely crush me but my scaly friend is of sterner stuff." **

* * *

An assassination drone followed professor Cullen. This time around, the mission was more complicated. The operators didn't just need to assassinate Carlisle, they also needed to gather information. Hopefully before the higher ups learned about the malfunction of the first drone. Luckily, the drones had been designed to destroy themselves so no traces were left. Hopefully.

Carlisle turned into a restroom suddenly. The drone waited outside. After a while, the operators sent a command for it to go in.

The drone entered. Just like in movies, it walked through the room, no one in sight. There were stalls on one side, sinks and urinals on the other. The drone continued onward while the operators switched to audio-location. There were no people to be seen so they searched for a heartbeat instead.

And a heartbeat they did find. In the last stall. The drone continued in that direction.

Suddenly, Edward (no heartbeat) threw paint in the drone's eyes. Before the operators had any chance to register that the vision was blocked, Bella was behind the drone. A quick insertion of the USB flash drive and the drone froze.

"What a hell?" exclaimed an operator when their feed went dark and the error reporting dialog box appeared. He clicked on "Cancel" a few times and the blue screen of death appeared.

"Are you kidding me?" yelled the operator and swept the screen of the table. "Damn this operating system!"

"Dude, we are making this system," reminded him the other operator.

"I know! That's what's makes it so infuriating."

Back in the restroom, Edward and Bella took the drone's head off. Carlisle emerged from a stall.

"Be careful!" he cautioned.

Very carefully, Edward and Bella cracked the head open and extracted the CPU. The body started to burn inside out, just like before. The smoke was unpleasant to Edward and Bella and suffocating to Carlisle. They ran out quickly and hid in a ladies' room next door.

"Do you have it?" asked Carlisle.

Edward showed him the implant.

"Is that ARM?"

Edward nodded.

"Huh. Cyborg assassins with laptop chips in their heads controlled by the faultiest OS on the planet," observed Carlisle. "Now I've seen everything."

"Let's go collect Esme before they send another one," urged them Bella.

Later on, when all four of them drove in a car back to their basement, they rehashed the question of predetermination in supposedly open games. They came to a conclusion that if something is waiting for you from the beginning, like the space dragon waiting for the newbie to make a mistake, that it's more or less kosher.

They had two issues with implementing anything that follows such an event, even when the event isn't a watershed one. One was the simple fact that the top-level DEVS automatons controlling basically everything from that point till the end needed to be statically pre-programmed. So, even though the game was going to be organic and unprecedentedly open in details, its overall structure was still given. It wasn't going to be visible on first play-through but they were sure that most players were going to load from a save before the visit of the space dragon after finishing the game and simply avoid the incident which prompted it. They had no alternative prepared. Jasper's story needed the player to make that critical blunder. If one kept avoiding it by exploiting the save system, than one could keep wandering the still primitive planet in real-time for the rest of one's natural life.

The other issue was purely cosmetic. The dragon can make his blunder in any place he wants and this can change the first narrator's race. However, his voice actor was going to remain the same regardless and he was going to say the same things most of the time in exactly the same way. Fortunately, this wasn't such a tragedy.


	6. Fifty Shades Nerdier

Fifty Shades Nerdier

Everybody (all eight of them) was back in the basement. Alas, Emmett and Rose were still changing so they couldn't participate in the conversations taking place there. Carlisle discussed their current situation with Bella and Edward while Esme was talking with Jasper and Alice about the story.

"Well," said Carlisle. "I think this was the last time they underestimated us. Only a fool does the same mistake twice ergo third time may be a charm even for a fool. They won't send an assassin this time around, they'll send a cleaning squad. We need to be ready."

"This ARM processor shares some of the vulnerabilities of Intel and AMD ones, right?" remembered Bella. "Can we exploit them somehow? I mean besides by sticking an USB drive in them."

"Well, we have the software which runs them now," replied Edward. "I can disassemble it, read it, and reverse-engineer their communication protocol. The question is whether there's going to be anything useful."

"Have you found anything interesting in the recording of their remote commands?" asked Carlisle.

As they had found out, the drone had been using standard cellphone connection. That, in addition with the used OS and software, explained the sluggishness of the drones.

"It's all encrypted," answered Bella. "So, as Edward is surely going to find out, it won't be easy, maybe not even possible, to take control of them or send false images to their operators. It will be simpler to perform a denial of service attack on the drones."

She opted not to mention that blowing all the cell towers in the area up would also do the job.

"And stall them long enough to stick an USB in them?" remarked Carlisle with a smirk.

"There will be four of us," argued Edward. "We can simply tear them apart just as well."

"True."

At the same time, Esme brought up a highly controversial point to Jasper and Alice. Perhaps her choice of this moment to discuss it was prompted by Edward and Bella being occupied.

"You need to make the story more relatable to normal people," she said. "People with lives."

"Of course," agreed Jasper. "What exactly does that mean though?"

"Romance! At least a light one and not fleshed out deeply."

"No!" protested Jasper. "We can't do that. It goes against everything geeks like us stand for."

"Plus, there are no lady dragons around," seconded Alice.

"I wasn't thinking about the dragon," clarified Esme. "A romance between a follower of his, perhaps the very first one, and his love interest. So, it's going to be a sort of a vicarious thing."

"But we don't know anything about things like that!"

"I can play a consultant on this one. Plus, it doesn't have to be anything special. Marriage and a bunch of kids. The dragon can work with their descendants a century later."

"You know, it can broaden our player-base," pondered Alice.

"OK, as you wish," surrendered Jasper. "But the others have to agree. Emmett especially - he'll be implementing it."

After some more discussions and mingling, Bella and Jasper went to buy groceries. Edward worked on some game functionality and Alice drew artworks. Carlisle and Esme made some phone calls and sent some e-mails to arrange for their absence.

Rose and Emmett were going to wake up soon.

* * *

The dragon returns from his dream journey to the waking world and opens his eyes. The cave around him looks almost exactly the same as when he retreated there eons ago. Even any marks of his presence there are negligible because his metabolism was slowed down tremendously during his sleep. When he moves, he hears cracking of a thin layer of solidified dust covering his body.

He crawls out, dismantling his barricades on the way. Only when he emerges from the caves does he see the difference. Where used to be bald hills, there are forests now. It's a different time of year but he can tell from the vegetation that the temperature has risen slightly. He computes that this enhances agriculture which will lead to population increase in turn.

He hunts to replenish his nutrients and explores around. Civilization has not reached the area yet but he discovers remains of a hunting cabin. Most people wouldn't even notice it from what little has remained of it but he reconstructs it in his mind.

The dragon begins his trek back to the "crime scene". He doesn't hurry, he has a lot of work to do on his way. He processed the fundaments of the theory of magic during first few decades of his sleep. Now, he needs to put that theory to praxis.

As expected, the spell is quite difficult. Someone's first thought could be that it's not a good first spell. Alas, the dragon isn't an "ordinary" practitioner of magic and the black dragon knew what was he doing. Knowing only one magical pattern, he has no other choice but to put all his time and effort into it. Still, he suspects that if he had searched long and hard enough, he could have found simpler spells somewhere.

He still can't cast the spell when he arrives. That's not a tragedy. He uses his conventional camouflage and searches the area.

The villagers are gone. The dragon leaves investigating the remains of the village for later.

There are no other people living in vicinity, just like before. Alas, civilization still seems to be present in the region. There's a road passing through an edge of the area. It seems that more people traverse through here in this era than before. Alas, he sees no truly recent marks of passage.

There's a small burned out outpost by the road. The dragon finds some human bones there. No weapons and no armor (or anything metallic for that matter). Both the outpost and the bones don't seem that old.

He finds something else nearby - a head of a stone ax. The handle has rotten away. Was this weapon used in the attack? Judging by its design, it was meant for somebody of smaller stature. Somebody like a goblin, let's say.

There are more signs of human presence in the area though none as interesting. Some of them are old enough to be left there by the villagers, some are as new as the outpost.

Finally, he returns to the village. Since there's no one there anyway, he unmasks. It's time to find out what happened here after he left.

A pile of pieces of granite in the middle of the village catches his attention first. They are covered by moss, elements eroded their edges, and many are missing. A human eye would have trouble discovering which pieces belonged together. Alas, all the pieces used to be part of one whole and in his inner eye, the dragon can see the whole as it was before it was broken - it used to be a statue. A statue of him, to be precise, and not a bad one either as far as he can guess. It's hard to tell but while it doesn't seem like an artist's work, it's no amateur stuff either. There was a mason in the village so it's probably his product. A lot of time had to be invested in the statue which means that the other villagers had to feed the mason and his apprentice for free while they were working on this "pet project". Moreover, there's no granite quarry in vicinity so the material was imported. A lot of trouble for a statue of something they saw for only few short moments. Then again, it seems to be more accurate than that. Perhaps those two young ones helped to get the details right?

The dragon shakes his head. He's starting to have a bad feeling about this. Maybe the century-long hibernation wasn't meant to prevent him from making the situation worse. Maybe the black dragon wanted the results of his actions to grow and fester so he would learn his lesson.

There's no point in dwelling over this so the dragon gets on with his investigation. He searches remnants of dwellings and finds a few broken statuettes of himself. He suspects that there used to be way more of them.

One of the buildings was probably a place of worship. A worship of him, of course. A disturbing detail is that it was also an administration center.

There's something which seems to be remains of a half-finished palisade at the side of the village which faces away from the road and the outpost. Maybe it's due to the decomposition but even after reconstruction it looks laughable.

Having all the pieces and clues, he returns to the middle of the village. It's time to perform one of his oldest "tricks" again. He gazes through time and sees the settlement as it used to be in its prime. He already knows the answer but there's no dodging it now - the villagers worshiped him. He remembers what it did to the goblin tribe. He has little doubt that this worship caused the downfall of the village. It seems that his intervention did them little good.

His promise to the black dragon is far from fulfilled. He still needs to find out what exactly happened and to seek out any remaining ripples of his actions and deal with them appropriately. However, he doesn't know where to go yet and how to find the descendants of the villagers. So, he decides to remain and observe. The area seems to be active so it's his best bet to find out more. He practices his magic and rests.

A few weeks later, his mind registers presence of sentient life in the area. They don't seem to be human. He gets up and investigates. A group of goblin scouts. They seem to be similar to the ones who worshiped him when he was in an egg. They find out that the area is empty and they retreat. Were they looking for victims to capture? Or perhaps scouting out enemy movements? Finding out more would require venturing to the neighboring areas.

He keeps practicing the invisibility spell until he can cast it reliably. He thinks there's space for improvement but it will have to suffice for now. He needs to try it out in praxis before he gets more comfortable with it.

He finds a hiding place and goes to sleep. A little deeper one, so that goblins won't disturb him unless they get close to him but anything with greater mental presence will wake him right away.

Months pass before he's roused. This time, it seems to be a human mind. Finally something interesting. Hopefully.

When he sees the man, he's stricken by his similarity to the lad he saved along with his sweetheart in the woods all those years ago. He's much manlier and scruffier but that's due to the fact that he's at least thrice as old. Certain features from the girl can be recognized on him as well. So the two of them got married and had children. That's heart-warming.

The man wears a sturdy leather jerkin and has saddlebags slung over his shoulder. He's armed by a bow and arrows and he's also got an ax made of wrought iron hanging from his belt. All in all, he looks like a scout or a ranger. Is this area a no man's land between territories of humans and goblins?

The man searches the area and finds tracks of a goblin party. They aren't from the ones the dragon saw earlier, they are newer. More goblins must have been here during his second sleep.

The man prepares a number of punji traps on the most traversed routes and notes their positions on a flat piece of wood by his knife. He masks the pits by vegetation. When he's done, he goes to the ruins of the village and makes camp in the worship building but he doesn't make fire.

As the dragon observes from distance, the narrator's voice returns:

**"I found it a strange irony of fate to be in that place. However, the rewards for goblin heads were good and I saw no rational reason to avoid the place. And yet, I couldn't shake a feeling that somebody was watching me. Oh how right I was." **

The man makes regular patrols and the dragon observes him through birds. At first, he scoffs at his stupidity because he's leaving footprints all over the place. Then he realizes that he's making them on purpose to lead any trackers into his traps. It wouldn't work against humans probably but goblins aren't as bright.

An animal falls into one of his traps one day. The man tracks it down and puts it out of its misery. He still doesn't make a fire and dries the meat in the sun instead.

One day, goblins come again. The dragon detects them first while the man remains oblivious. He contemplates tipping him off somehow but then the man notices a flock of birds flying off as if startled by something. It makes him to go to investigate. The dragon leaves his hideout

There's a column of four goblin scouts. They find the man's old footprints and follow them, utterly oblivious to the fact that he's behind them. Soon enough, the one in front falls in a hole with punji sticks. At the same time, the man shoots the last one. The remaining two stand back to back, assuming an ambush from multiple enemies. Not a smart move, considering that they are being shot at. The man kills one and then the other. The dragon has to admit, the man has some skill and he's quite quick for his age.

What follows next is rather distasteful. The man uses his ax to sever their heads and carries them back to the village. There he finally makes a fire and starts giving the heads a rudimentary preservation treatment. He gives one of the heads much better care than the others. While they are getting smoked, he makes a round around the remaining traps and disposes of them.

The dragon has a difficult decision in front of him. The man's business in the area seems to be concluded and the dragon doubts that he's going to be back anytime soon. If there's anybody who can help him resolve the situation, it's him. The black dragon mentioned that he can have helpers, after all. On the other hand, the man can blame the dragon for the decline of the village and refuse to help him. That would be quite a precarious situation because exposing his existence is serious.

So far, the "mental vibes" the dragon has been getting from the man passively haven't revealed anything worrisome. Still, the dragon would like to learn more before making his decision. He cancels his invisibility (while staying masked) and tries to get a better read on the man. It doesn't go well - the man feels his presence right away. Having suspected that somebody was watching him for this whole time, he also notices something among trees and has an arrow notched in a blink of an eye. If he was twenty years younger, he would send an arrow there immediately. However, he's wiser now and realizes perfectly well that whoever or whatever it is, it could have attacked many times over by now.

"Show yourself!" he shouts instead. Obviously, his voice matches with that of the narrator so it's confirmed that it's him.

The dragon decides to take a leap of faith and cancels his masking. He tries to say "Do not fear me" but only first two words come out (heavily garbled) before the arrow slips from the fingers of the stupefied man. It breaks harmlessly on the dragon's scales and not just because the bow was no longer fully drawn when it happened.

"I'm sorry!" cries the man out and drops the bow. "It was an accident!"

When he sees that the dragon isn't charging, he adds to himself "It was all true. It was all true!"

The dragon tries to speak again and makes a noise which sounds like "Arrr Rrrrigt". He meant to communicate that he's all right.

The man seems utterly unsure what to do. Seeing that verbal communication won't work for him, the dragon tries another approach. He contacts the man telepathically. He conveys that he's a friend and that it was him who helped the two villagers in the woods a century ago which eventually led to him repelling the raider attack. He also tries to explain that it was a big mistake for him to be seen by the entire village in broad daylight and thus unnaturally influence their lives but he doesn't get that far. The man clutches his head and collapses with a grunt.

The dragon lies down and waits for the man to recuperate. To his credit, he didn't faint. He sits up slowly after some time.

"That was overwhelming," he remarks.

The dragon nods.

"Do you understand me?"

The dragon nods again.

"But you can't talk."

The dragon shakes his head and starts writing something in the dirt.

"I'm not good at reading," interrupts him the man. "In fact, I can hardly read at all."

The dragon stops and gives the man an expectant look.

"By the way, those two you saved before the main attack, those were my grandparents," divulges the man after a while.

The dragon nods to communicate that he suspected as much.

"So, what I'm really trying to say, I'm really grateful for what you did. I wouldn't be here otherwise. I don't have much going on in my life but I really enjoy being here in this world."

The dragon makes a little bow with his head. He tries to make it look different from an affirmative nod. There's another silent pause.

"I've never thought it would be like this," remarks the man. "Well, I've never really thought about this, to be honest. The priests, those would get a heart attack from this! All that time, they were telling everybody that decisions of divine beings were beyond our understanding but if I'm reading this right, you were just at the right place at the right time and wanted to do the right thing."

The dragon sees that they won't get anywhere without proper means of communication. Establishing a telepathic exchange is harmful for the man. However, what if he brought the communication to a lower level? After all, all he needs is to bypass his lack of vocal cords. He attempts to send him words instead of images. Not the actual sounds (because he doesn't know yet how human brain interprets sound), nor their meanings (because that would be almost as bad as sending images), but their abstract symbols (or rather icons) which identify them in the vocabulary of the language.

"Is. This. Better," he sends over.

The man's eyes widen but he doesn't show any pain.

"I can understand you!" he exclaims. "Without hearing anything. Very strange."

"What. Is. Your. Name," asks the dragon.

"Syward. I don't particularly like the name but I guess my parents could have picked something much worse."

"Tell. Me. Everything," requests the dragon.

"Everything," repeated Syward contemplatively. "Very well. I'll tell you what I've heard from my mother and my grandparents. After the bandits ran away and things calmed down, the village elders declared your intervention a divine one. They said that the village was under protection of a god - a dragon."

"What. Is. That," interrupts the dragon.

"What is what?"

"The word. You. Said."

"Dragon?"

"Yes."

"That's you. It means a manifestation of a god. The word didn't exist yet back then. The priest made it up later and everybody agreed that it was a fitting name."

It's not a word the dragon can relay at the moment. However, he doesn't need to - he can use "me" instead. He tells Syward that he's not a god but the man understands as much already from their first connection. Syward clears his throat and continues the story.

"Not everybody bought into that but they thought that what few bandits survived will surely spread the story and that such such a legend could help to protect the village. My grandparents were the only ones who protested. They said that they had got a different impression from their encounter with you. However, the elders told them to keep silent. They had other things to worry about, like getting married and starting a family, and they didn't want to make waves so they complied. They even helped the mason with a statue of you."

Syward stops to see if the dragon has any questions.

"No. Bandits. Survived," says the dragon. "No. Stories. Told."

He doesn't have to tell that he was the one who killed them all. After all, the villagers were the ones who cleared the bodies away.

"Well, that's... impressive," remarks Syward. "The elders said that you hunted most of the survivors down as a punishment but obviously it was my grandparents who were right when they said that you didn't want to leave witnesses. You don't do anything halfway."

The last bit is not true, obviously. His interference with the village was the embodiment of halfwayness. He points that out to Syward. Alas, he was forced to go to sleep afterwards. He reveals that as well but he doesn't say anything about the black dragon from space. He suspects that the concept would confuse Syward at this point. Instead, he simply says that it was a punishment for his rashness.

"Well, perhaps," replies Syward diplomatically. "However, it was our elders who, in their greed, decided to create your cult and it was all the others who decided to blindly follow their preaching. In following years, instead of training militia and building a palisade, the villagers constructed a hall of worship. This proved to be quite a mistake later on. The militia and the palisade, I mean. Bandits, wild beasts - this village was completely open to any danger. Luckily, an aspiring feudal lord started to consolidate neighboring areas. He arrived to this village too one day and offered the elders membership in his alliance. That's how they called it back then. The elders accepted. In their foolishness, they thought that the other villages would protect them and they would spread their religion into the entire region. Of course, they weren't dumb enough to tell him that. The lord was no simpleton either and he had heard rumors. He laid two simple demands for improving the village's defenses: a militia and a palisade. The elders promised to remedy the weaknesses but they didn't deliver in full for as long as he lived. Those who tried to take the power from the priests ended up in a pillory."

The dragon listens intently. All of it sounds very familiar to what happened to the goblin tribe. He notes that Syward keeps talking about the village and the villagers in third person. That's no great surprise.

"This village started as the most backward and most ridiculed place of this land and remained that way until the end. For as long as this village's weakness affected only itself, everybody else was alright with it. After all, it drew all the outside dangers away from them. When bandits wanted to raid this land, they always chose this place rather than some well defended town. I guess that's why it kept its autonomy for so long. That changed in the time of the second lord when a tribe of goblins arrived and claimed a territory east from here. I think it was a mere coincidence but the other settlements believed that they chose the weakest link intentionally and saw it as a proof of an upcoming invasion. The village elders kept promising that the dragon was going to return and deliver them from all danger."

The dragon has trouble believing that "his" religion could have caused such idiocy. At the same time, he realizes that it wasn't a matter of faith for all those who saw him. He has to admit that such a sight had to affect those ordinary people profoundly.

"So the reigning lord, the founder's son, arrived to the village with a bunch of muscle. He declared that the village defied his father's orders. When the high priest tried some sermon on him, he had him put in the pillory and tore down your statue. Then he put the village's most important patriarchs in charge. You know, the blacksmith, the miller, the innkeeper, the biggest farmers, and so on. Unfortunately, all of it was too little, too late. And at the same time too much for some people. If the lord had thought that he had ended the cult, then he would have been a fool. It continued underground with the dragon priests still in charge despite the humiliation of their prior. The problem was, most people didn't like having their faith spit on. So, as you can guess, the building of the palisade and the training of the militia didn't go too well. Then one night, half of the village traveled away under the leadership of the priests to regions unknown. With a village that hobbled, the new village council couldn't possibly build any real defense against the goblins. Even before then, the population was dwindling because many parents preferred to marry their daughters to other villages and many young man preferred to seek fortune elsewhere as well. After the exodus, it was clear that the fate of the village was sealed. The lord refused to send any help and his stance mirrored that of every village and town around here. Goblins somehow smelled that the village was ripe for plundering and attacked. They took everything that had any value to them. Those who could sought new lives in other settlements. Those who couldn't spent the rest of their lives in the spaces in between. And that's it, as far as this village is concerned."

The dragon still isn't surprised by anything said so far. All of it matches the pattern. However, the sentimental part of him would like to hear more about Syward's grandparents - the root cause of it all.

"Tell. Me. About. Your. Family," he requests.

"My family?" asks Syward, perplexed. "I don't have any family."

"Tell. Me. Everything."

"You mean starting from my grandparents you saved?"

The dragon nods.

"What's your deal with them anyway? Why did you save them back then and why are you so interested in them?"

"I. Was. Studying. Human. Courting/Mating. Rituals."

He meant to relay courtship but a brain of a common man like Syward failed to interpret it properly.

Syward stares at the dragon for a moment. Then he starts laughing. It's as if some last seal is broken and the dragon is no longer a divine being for him. It's a person with his own traits and peculiarities. And some peculiarities they are!

"You... You watch people as they..." stammers Syward between hiccups of laughter.

"It. Is. All. For. The purpose. Of. Learning. More. About. You," replies the dragon. He growls instead of an exclamation mark.

"Very well, as you wish," says Syward finally. "Those two you saved, my maternal grandparents, had two daughters. They had one right away because the future of the village seemed bright back then. When they saw the direction the village's ideology was going, they decided to postpone any more children for more stabler times. Then they got older and the situation wasn't improving so they had another daughter, my mother, while they still could. Despite the reputation of their village, they managed to find a good match for the older one in another settlement. Unfortunately, she died in her first childbirth, along with the child. My mother went with her parents after the village's collapse. They built a small cottage in woods in a middle of an uninhabited area which became a new frontier after this one was claimed by wilderness. She stayed with them until she herself started getting on the older side. That was when her parents convinced her to get married. They told me later that they felt that it was the right thing to do - that her dying without leaving children would discard what you had done for then at the very beginning of it all. So, the three of them found an older childless widower who needed a wife to take care of him. They had one child - me. So, here I am."

Syward seems unsure whether the dragon wants to hear more so the beasts makes a twirling motion with a claw which corresponds with an index finger to communicate that he does indeed.

"I guess it won't come as a big surprise when I say that it wasn't a happy marriage. Those two really didn't like each other but you know what they say - live together or die alone. I didn't like it there so I spent more time with my maternal grandparents then with them. My father's parents were dead already and my mother was glad that somebody was helping out her parents who were getting quite old at the time. That was when I heard all the details about their encounter with you. I didn't believe it back then but I didn't disbelieve them either. I was right in that area in between where you don't really care about the truth. When I was old enough, I left the home for good. I became my uncle's apprentice. The one who was married to my mother's older sister. He had not married again so I was the closest thing to a son he had. He was a ranger and, as you have noticed, he taught me well."

The dragon gives him an expectant look.

"There's nothing more to tell. My grandparents died of old age. My uncle was wounded by a boar during a hunt and perished from it. My father died of old age as well and my mother died of pneumonia several years back. In quite an advanced age I must say."

The dragon remembers that Syward told him that he has no family. Still, he has to point out the obvious.

"You. Are. The last. Of. Your. Family."

"Yes. At least I hope so. And don't tell me that I owe it to my ancestors to start a family of my own. As I said, I am grateful to you and I'll repay you with my assistance should you request it. However, I'm not some horse to be bred."

This gives the dragon a feeling of futility. Still, Syward is absolutely right. More than that - he has no reason to be grateful to the dragon either. He ought to tell him that.

"You. Owe. Nothing. Nor. To. Me. Neither. To. Your. Ancestors."

"Thank you. Still, I'll assist you in any way I can, if it's all the same."

"Tell. Me. More," requested the dragon. "What. Happened. After. This. Village. Perished."

"Of course. I don't know what happened to the those cultists who left but I can tell you what happened here. With the village gone, the goblins were no longer our neighbors. This area became a no man's land. There's a road passing through here and traders needed to use it so an outpost was constructed to guard it and to keep an eye on any goblin incursions. There weren't any. At least not back them. The goblins didn't progress any further and we didn't try to reclaim what was lost. We expanded in the opposite direction though and that was also where I worked most of the time. There was peace. The second lord died and was succeeded by his son. He gave himself a title of a baron and spent next few decades consolidating the fiefdom, thus creating our current society. Then, several years ago, the goblins renewed their hostility and started raiding again. This empty area was like a wedge cut into our borders. A weak point. The outpost fell first. Several times over, in fact. Each time it was manned again, the goblins would strike again, slaughter everybody, and burn it down. In the end, it proved uneconomical to maintain military presence there and the usage of the road was abandoned. When a rare caravan traverse it for some reason, they bring their own escort. There was a counteroffensive, of course. The baron assembled an army and led it into their territory with an intention of culling their population. I was there myself. However, it's a wilderness over there and there's no one alive who knows it there so we didn't celebrate much success. In fact, we killed only a little more of them then we lost of ours and not always to them. Ever since then, this war was mostly led through rangers such as myself. We get paid for every goblin head we bring back. At the same time, goblin parties make occasional incursions into the barony. Mostly, they just take food, tools, and weapons. However, I've heard a few claims that they were even kidnapping people. But who knows, maybe those just got killed in fighting and carried away to be eaten. Waste not, want not."

The last bit of information catches the dragon's attention. He has a theory of why they might kidnap people. All it would take is for them to have some kind of a connection with the goblin tribe which discovered his egg. He explains the whole business to Syward. Once again, he doesn't reveal that his egg came from space. At the same time, he doesn't say that it fell from sky because it could make him doubt whether he truly is not a god.

"It's little hard to believe that they would still remember you after all this time," argues Syward. "They are quite dumb."

"Indeed," agrees the dragon. "They. Are. Not. Smart. Enough. For. Any. Of. This."

He further theorizes that while their arrival in the region during the reign of the founder's son could be explained by some external factors which forced them to do it, they are most certainly way too stupid to give so much trouble now.

"Do you think that someone else is pulling their strings? Who?"

The dragon has got a suspicion but it's not in his nature to make baseless accusations. So, he merely insinuates.

"We. Do. Not. Know. Where. The priests. Led. Your. People."

"Now that's some seriously paranoid idea! Why would they help them? Why would they help each other?"

The dragon makes no answer. It's a long shot but what if the priests and the goblin tribe somehow managed to share their legends and find out that their beliefs are related? At this point, his theory is as good as any.

"I have another theory. I bet there's some other land to the east, on the other side of the wilderness. It's populated and ruled by people just like us. They want to expand into our territory but they do not wish to pay with their blood for that. So, they send goblin mercenaries to soften us first."

Syward's theory is as probable as the other. Moreover, the dragon doesn't even know what's on the other side of the goblin territory. He didn't come from that direction but this is the only civilization he has encountered on his way from his lair. He can fly there later but first, he would like to have a look around the barony. They discuss their immediate plans next.

"I was going to backtrack those four rascals and do some scouting. See if they were a part of a bigger group. But I'm not going to do that now that you're here. I need to pick my horse up and turn the heads in. Perhaps we'll come up with some ideas in the meantime. However, I see one big problem about you following me into the barony. People are bound to notice you, even with that scale color thing of yours. I'm not even talking about the sound of your wings or your footprints."

That's not entirely true. Even his ordinary masking is more than sufficient when he's up in the sky - if the weather is right. As it is, however, he has other tricks in his sleeve. He explains about the true invisibility.

"So, you won't be able to talk to me," muses Syward. "What about scratching a sign in dirt?"

The dragon gives a negative answer to this and a few more asinine ideas.

Syward packs his things and removes any apparent signs of his presence. The dragon casts his spell and disappears completely. Syward is quite perceptive and notices that he should see on the ground in front of him that something heavy is standing there but he does not. Then he hears a sound of the dragon taking off and indentions and trampled grass appear in front of him. He shakes his head and starts walking back where he came from.

Next day, they arrive to an inn. The dragon flies ahead to take a look at it. It looks fortified. The men around are armed and hardy. It seems it serves as an economical alternative to a military outpost.

Syward stops a long distance from it, next to a large tree. He waves and waits there until the dragon lands on it. When they hear the wood groan under the weight, they wonder whether that doesn't count as communicating the fact that he's there.

Syward takes the one head which he preserved better than the others. He leaves a sack with the remaining three under the tree.

"Could you watch these, please?" he asks. "Wouldn't want to give those guys there any temptation. I'll be back shortly."

He goes to the inn and when he returns, not only he does so with his horse but also with a purchase of vegetables and other merchandise. It seems that he has used the preserved head as a currency to pay for stabling the horse. Morbid but practical.

Back at the inn, several man prepare to ride out too. Syward told them about goblin movements, no doubt.

The horse seems unsettled and the closer they get back to the dragon, the more panicky he is. Obviously, he can smell the beast. Syward does his best to calm him down. The dragon takes off and when Syward collects the remaining heads and rides away, he follows.

It doesn't take long before the horse smells the dragon again. Soon afterwards, Syward sees that he has dropped his invisibility. He dismounts and leads the horse closer.

"I. Could. Calm. The Horse," offers the dragon.

"No way," refuses Syward. "I don't want his brain scrambled. Besides, you can't go with us to the town anyway. People would still hear you. You would still leave tracks."

"There. Is. A way. Even. When. Invisible. I. Can. Watch. Through. Your. Horse's. Eyes. Without. Breaking. The spell."

"That still sounds like scrambling his brain."

"Horse. Mind. Is. Simpler. He. Won't. Mind. Or. Notice."

In the end, they agree that it is the simplest way (besides doing the same with Syward himself). Using another animal would be complicated without controlling it as well - and that would break the spell.

Syward doesn't want to arrive to his destination at night so they don't hurry and spend another night in wilderness. They arrive to the town next day. Once again, the dragon flies ahead to take a look.

It's one of the larger settlements. It has a solid palisade which is in some places doubled with the space in between filled by dirt. There are over two dozen houses inside and there are more houses and farms outside.

The dragon knows from Syward that it's even larger than the capital from which the baron rules. However, that's because the capital is actually the baron's fort surrounded by a small village.

Syward is approaching the outskirts of the town so the dragon lands on a nearby rock and watches through the horse.

Syward slows down as he rides by a tavern with an attached stable and a wagon warehouse. It seems like a rest for traders and travelers who don't need to enter the town itself. A corpulent woman in her late twenties or early thirties is sweeping the porch.

"Hylda!" greets her Syward.

"Back from your prowl, you old dog?" she responds.

"Aye! And not without a haul too! Do you want to take a look?"

He shakes the sack with the three goblin heads as he asks that. The dragon notes the differences in the way he talks to the woman from how he talks to him.

"Oh shame on you, you dirty lecher! Haven't they taught you not to show these to girls?"

Syward is about give a witty response when the front door open and an old man walks out. He's obviously older then Syward but probably not by much. The difference between their fitness, on the other hand, amounts to a whole generation.

"Leave my granddaughter alone unless you want her to stable your horse!" he barks.

"Sorry, I will need it to carry the stuff I'm going to buy once I get paid," replies Syward, bows his head, and rides on.

The dragon wonders what was that about but he can't ask Syward now.

Syward dismounts and continues on foot. A guard by the gate greets him by his name and he responds. It seems he's a regular visitor here.

He stops at a war office first and turns in the heads. The horse is outside but the dragon can still hear what's being said inside.

"That's not too many," comments the officer. "You've quit early this time around."

"I stayed there too long as it was. Those rats are getting careful in that forsaken place and that entire section of the border. Waiting there for more heads to stroll in is a waste of time. Unless you're willing to live there and that's asking for trouble."

"My, my. Aren't you getting wise in your old age."

"Maybe. In that case, let me share my wise plan with you."

There's groaning of the wooden floor. Maybe he's walking to a map.

"I'll continue further along the border, away from the goblins. Then I'll ride out into the wilderness and patrol there for any raiding parties trying to flank our defences. A few of my comrades should be doing the same on the opposite side."

That corresponds with their plan of having another palaver after turning the heads in. Also, it sounds like a good idea and a chance to capture a live goblin.

"That seems unlikely," disagrees the officer. "Such a move would be too complicated for goblins. They are too dumb for that!"

"They are too dumb for any of what we've seen from them in this war. I'm getting convinced that someone is advising them."

Talk about presenting someone else's ideas as your own. Alas, the dragon isn't petty.

"That's wild!" exclaims the officer. "Why don't you go tell the baron about that?"

"Not without proof. Say, would a captured goblin be worth more than a mere head?"

What a coincidence. Great minds think alike?

"A head is a head. It doesn't matter whether it's cut off or attached to a living body."

"You can't interrogate a dead head."

"Neither a living one. Do they even have a language?"

"They do, trust me."

"Then you can interrogate one yourself! Now go, ranger. Do your job and stop wasting my time."

"Will do," replies Syward and walks out.

He goes around his shopping then, buying various supplies and essentials. On his way away from the town, he spots Hylda and they wave at each other.

The dragon waits for Syward on the other side of the town.

"What. Was. The business. With. Her. About," he asks.

"Oh for crying out loud!" exclaims Syward. "Don't you know anything about privacy? And don't we have bigger problems to worry about?"

As was said to the officer, they travel further along the border and then diverge into the wilderness. It's a territory which isn't claimed by anyone with the exception of wild beasts. Between the two of them, they aren't worried in the least by that.

They make camp and discuss their plans. The dragon stays camouflaged to be safe. Syward's horse is getting used to the dragon's presence.

The dragon learns that no goblin has ever been interrogated because no one knows their language. On one hand, that's no problem for the dragon who has experience with goblin languages. Even if this tribe's dialects proves to be too different, he can still read a captive's mind. On the other hand, he can't interrogate a captive this way without killing him afterwards.

"I can't go to the baron's people and tell them that a dragon told me that he had read something from a mind of a captured goblin!" insists Syward. "And let me guess, you will never reveal yourself to the baron."

"Rrrrigt!" growls the dragon out laud (but not too loudly).

"That wouldn't be a good idea anyway. He would get a heart attack in his age..."

Syward trails off, stricken by a sudden idea given to him by the dragon's rare vocalization.

"There could be a way for you to conduct the interrogation through me," he says. "And we need to learn to communicate better anyway. The way you talk to me now is very difficult to follow. Is it possible for you to talk to me more naturally? Like when someone is truly speaking?"

The dragon nods and adds, "It. Will. Take. Time."

"Well, we aren't going anywhere, are we?"

That was the dragon's original goal. His current way of symbolic communication limits him to most common words and prevents him from saying sentences properly. This way would be like normal talking but with vocal cords and ears taken out of the process.

They get to it right away. Syward considers using the time to lay traps but they decide against it in the end. If traps are going to be necessary, the dragon can uncover enemy movements and tell Syward to place traps only where needed.

The time spent with Syward has prepared the dragon well so in a few days, he's able to talk to the man the new way better than the old one. It's still quite strange. Before, Syward understood without hearing. Now, he hears without hearing anything. The dragon can tell him whatever he wants but he's still de facto voiceless. However, there's no doubt that this is the most natural way of communication he can have with people. Anything further along would be an illusion - a matter of magic rather than ordinary telepathy.

No goblins are coming yet so they proceed to prepare for a possible interrogation too. Understanding his own language is one thing for Syward but hearing and repeating an alien one exactly is another.

After several more days, the dragon detects a host of incoming goblins. As usual, there are four scouts and the main body trails behind them.

They have two options. One is for the dragon to attack the main group from behind and slaughter them all. That would leave them free to deal with the scouts at leisure. The other is to to use the dragon's senses to ambush the scouts, capture one of them, kill the rest, and escape before the others catch up. In the end, they decide for the way of lesser exposure.

The dragon tells Syward where exactly are the scouts going. He prepares a noose trap at an animal trail they are using and when it springs, he opens fire from his bow. This time around, one of the goblins starts running away to warn the others but the dragon paralysis him for a second which is all that Syward needs to put an arrow in him as well.

While Syward binds and blindfolds the captured one, the dragon observes the rest of the group. They do not progress when the scouts fail to report back. After a while of bickering, they send forth two more scouts. The dragon reports this and they dispose of them as well.

Not wanting to push his luck, Syward lays the captive over the saddle and leads the horse back to the border. The horse is rather unnerved by his cargo but he's trained to obey. The dragon observes the goblins for a little while longer. They understand at this point that there's an enemy presence in front of them. Not wanting to try their luck, they do the same as Syward and go back. They don't travel back to their territory at a straight line but backtrack their own route instead. It makes sense - it's a route they know.

That night, Syward sets everything up as planned. The goblin is frightened and docile. He isn't trying to speak to Syward because he doesn't expect him to know his language. The dragon approaches the camp so that he's behind the goblin's back and stops a sufficient distance away at a spot which provides some concealment. He makes an active contact with Syward and a passive one with their captive. Just like with the horse, he can read his mind without him noticing.

"Can you understand me?" asks Syward, repeating exactly after the dragon.

The goblin's eyes widen in surprise and he replies. Thanks to the dragon, they know that he said, "You speak the language of my kind?" Obviously, he didn't understand entirely.

Little by little, the dragon decodes the nuances of their captive's dialect. Syward himself is starting to get the basics of it. They don't learn anything beyond what's common knowledge among the goblins though. Still, it's far more than anybody in the barony has ever learned before.

According to what older goblins say, their tribe didn't migrate from their ancestral lands to this region out of their own volition - they were running from something. According to general belief, this something has caught up with them and is calling the shots now.

_"This may be a sign that your theory isn't correct,"_ thinks Syward.

"I wouldn't rule it out just yet," answers the dragon. "However, another theory just dawned on me. What if there's truly some powerful creature controlling them? Our friend's story share's some similarities to my own experience."

_"If there was another dragon, they wouldn't have ran away from it."_

At the moment, they don't know enough to make any conclusions. Further interrogation proves useless so they call it a night.

Next morning, Syward starts his trek back to the town. They travel just like before - the goblin on the horse and Syward on foot. He finds the arrangement rather annoying but it's faster than the other way around.

As they are nearing the town next day, Syward decides to make a "triumphant return" with the captive.

"Very well, buddy," he tells the goblin. "We'll switch places now. Wouldn't look good this way."

The goblin understands perfectly. He also knows that he's to be a gift for the baron. All in all, he's getting much better treatment than he expected so he complies willingly. The dragon, well hidden back in woods, smirks at the vanity but he can't begrudge it.

They do catch attention but not the way Syward hoped for. First, he notices signs of a recent battle. Then they see goblin heads on display. Initially, Syward thinks that the office decided to use all the heads in their possession as a decoration. Then he notices that they are too fresh and too dirty. It ought to raise questions but all he thinks is, "What if someone were to steal those heads and try to turn them in later?"

He notices that the goblin is no longer walking in front of him but is being pulled along by the rope. Syward stops the horse and turns in the saddle. The goblin seems scared.

Shouts can be heard. News of his arrival is spreading. A growing crowd surrounds him.

"Look! He's got a live one!" exclaims some woman.

"Let's hang it!" yells another one.

"No, that would be too easy for such a miserable creature!" roars a man. "We must make it suffer!"

Syward finally finds his voice. "What has happened here?" he asks loudly, trying to be heard over the crowd.

"They attacked while you were gallivanting around!" responds somebody. "Is this what we're paying you for?"

"Now, now. I've discovered useful..."

He doesn't get to finish. Some people try to grab the goblin. He yanks him back to him and jumps down on the ground. Good thing he has - the horse is nervous from the crowd and starts kicking around. It makes some space.

"Now listen up!" he booms. "This goblin is my captive and he's going to the baron!"

"So he can chop its head off and put it on display for his friends?" cackles the same woman who demanded hanging of the goblin. "What does he know about fending off goblin attacks?"

"Order! Order!" implores a new voice. It's the officer. Syward can't believe that he's glad to hear his voice.

"Syward! You did it! You brought one back!" congratulates the officer. "I'll take him from here."

"Now wait a moment. He's got some important information. There's more going on in this war than meets the eye. He needs to go to the baron."

"Don't be ridiculous. This crowd is rather bloodthirsty at the moment, if you haven't noticed. Here, did you say that a live one should be worth more than a dead one? I think you are right - twice as much!"

He thrusts a pouch of coins in Syward's chest who takes it absent mindedly. His eyes meet the goblin's who seems to have accepted his fate. The crowd drags the goblin away to do terrible things to him.

"What happened here?" asks Syward when they are alone.

"They hit us," answers the officer. "Twice. The first time wasn't so bad. After you left, I put the guards on alert. When they arrived, we were prepared. They weren't even trying back them. It was more like a test of our defenses. They lost a few, we none. Goblin attacks are uncommon here so the folks threw a little celebration yesterday. They hit us again in a middle of it."

Syward asks when that was but he knows the answer already. It was the same group he turned around in the wilderness.

"It was ugly," continues the officer. "I've never seen such zeal from them. Or cunningness. At least by their standards. They split in two groups. Most of them attacked at one place. They got slaughtered but managed to get a few of our people as well. But it was a mere diversion. Several of them raided the most outlying positions on the other side."

He doesn't need to say more. Syward rides to Hylda's grandfather's establishment. It's all burned down.

Subsequent questioning reveals that the smaller group attacked after the guests ran off to catch some easy goblin heads. Hylda and her grandfather probably tried to fend them off and the fire started during the struggle. The grandfather was dead - they found his bones in the ruins after the fire died down. There was no sign of Hylda. Some of the neighbors who came to fight the fire saw the goblins carrying someone away. They couldn't had gone after them. Even if there had been a tracker as competent as Syward, it was night.

Syward doesn't even bother with buying additional supplies. Even though he could pay extra, the town needs all of them for itself right now. He rides off in the direction where the goblins were seen to retreat to. The dragon meets him there.

"I think we both agree that saving Hylda is our next course of action," he tells Syward.

The man wants to shoot back some kind of a witty response but then he realizes that this is exactly what he wants. He still can't fully wrap his mind around the fact that the dragon wants to participate in such a mundane quest.

"Besides," continues the dragon. "We might learn something more about the mysterious menace behind the goblins."

_"You still can't watch us... you know what,"_ thinks Syward.

He knows that it wasn't what the dragon meant but he still can't help himself from making the jape. The dragon doesn't rise to it.

Syward follows the tracks while the dragon scouts covered by his invisibility. He doesn't fly too ahead because he doesn't want to risk getting separated. He doubts that he could find the goblin group before they reach their territory anyway.

The tracks head diagonally away from the road into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance from the border, the goblins changed their heading to be parallel with it. Syward has to lead the horse in most places.

After some time, the tracks disappear in a stream. That was quite dumb from them - Syward knows in which direction they had to go and on which bank were the tracks probably going to reappear. Still, the terrain (both in the stream and in the dense forest around) is quite difficult to negotiate for a horse, even when Syward isn't riding on it.

"Stay here and let the horse rest," says the dragon. "They couldn't have gone too far through this stream. I'll find the tracks again and scout an alternate route for you."

He doesn't trample around and sends a hare to follow the stream instead. He himself searches from the air for any visible marks of their passage. He calculates that at this point, they had to stop for some rest.

He's right. He spies a clearing and finds out upon closer examination that the goblins were there. He finds a better route there and returns to Syward. In the meantime, the hare makes a run along the tracks from the stream to the clearing to make sure that the group didn't split.

Upon arriving, Syward searches the clearing. Hylda's footprints are still plainly visible among the goblin ones. Also, he finds another sign of her passage.

"Now look at this!" he announces, holding up something small.

"It's a goblin tooth," observes the dragon.

"Can't say I'm surprised."

"And I'm not surprised that her dead body isn't lying here. Whoever controls the goblins wants the captives alive."

Syward rubs his eyes and forehead. Then he comes with a proposal.

"You know, I think my horse is proving to be a hindrance in this endeavor. Perhaps I should leave it at some place with a lot of grass."

"Perhaps. And perhaps you and Hylda will need to escape quickly. Maybe I can carry one of you but most certainly not both."

That gives Syward a pause. He looks at the dragon speculatively.

"No," the dragon answers the unvoiced question. "I can't be ridden. But let's say I can grab a person and carry it a short distance away. You, to be precise. I don't think I can get airborne with Hylda."

Syward thinks that it meant "won't be ridden" rather than "can't" but he doesn't ask for details.

They continue for a while longer before the sun sets. While Syward and the horse rest, the dragon repeats his trick and sends a few animals to follow the trace. At morning, he leads Syward to the point to which he has followed the footprints.

They enter the goblin territory before too long. Syward no longer rides - not even when he doesn't need to examine the tracks. The dragon's help is invaluable here. With his passive senses, he can detect any patrols way in advance.

Some time later, the pursued group was joined by another. From that point on, they seem to have progressed much faster to their destination. Tracking is no longer necessary, their heading is quite obvious. The dragon flies ahead while Syward hides.

"I've found her," he reports when he returns. "They hold her in some kind of a cave in what seems to be a regular goblin village."

"Is she all right?"

"I haven't seen her on my own eyes but she felt healthy. Whatever the reason for her kidnapping was, it's not there. I believe the village is merely a midway stop. Other goblins are probably going to transport her to her actual destination - after the celebration."

"What celebration?"

"They are celebrating those several survivors as heroes. Whatever is going on here, they needed her badly and are glad to have her."

"So it's confirmed - they were getting desperate. That's why were they willing to sacrifice themselves like that."

Sunset is still quite some time away so they don't hurry. They move closer to the village and start formulating a plan.

"Let me guess," asks Syward. "You can't swoop in, grab her, and carry her away."

"No. I can't let the goblins to see me."

Syward bites his tongue. He hears the implied detail that Hylda can see him. He doesn't wish to involve her in the story of his life but if it's necessary, then sure, he prefers her to be exposed to the truth rather than to death.

"I have an alternative idea though," adds the dragon. "I'll need to take a closer look through a proxy first but from what I've seen so far, it should work. It will require your horse though."

"For what?"

"I'll need to take remote control of him but I'm fairly confident that it won't, as you said, scramble his brain. At least not permanently."

Once again, Syward sees the same logic as before - better to sacrifice a horse than Hylda.

"Very well, I'm listening."

That was, of course, a mere figure of speech - the dragon isn't talking out loud.

The dragon explains and Syward has to admit that it's quite similar to what he would come up with. The dragon sends a bird to perform closer scouting. The cave Hylda is being held in is more like a cavity in a rock. It's shallow, doesn't lead anywhere and has only one entrance. The dragon can't discern whether it's fully natural but it seems to him that it was originally meant for multiple captives. Hylda herself has merely her hands bound (and not even behind her back) but the cave entrance is blocked by a crude fence with a simple gate and there are two guards in front of it. Normally, it would be a reasonable bet to assume that at least one of them is going to join the revels but as it is, it's safer to assume that additional guards are going to be posted this evening. Then again, they don't seem to expect to be attacked here.

"We need something to write on," says the dragon afterwards. "To relay a message to Hylda."

"I can't write. Remember?"

"That doesn't matter. Can Hylda read?"

"Yes. A bit."

"It will have to suffice."

Syward cuts a piece of leather from his jerkin while the dragon writes a short message in the dirt. Syward uses a knife to engrave the message in the leather. He wraps the leather around the knife and fastens it by a string.

They wait until twilight. A raven descends to them and picks the package up. Syward moves in the position.

The raven flies to the mouth of the cave, lining up its trajectory. At a precise moment, it lets go of the package and banks to a side. The dragon releases it then and the bird flies away with panicked cawing. The guards notice it, of course, but they don't pay it much attention. Also, it masks the sound of the knife clanking inside the cave.

At first, Hylda thinks that the goblins threw the package in there. Alas, her curiosity gets the better of her and she goes to inspect it. In the limited light coming from torches outside, she recognizes what it is. She still thinks that the goblins threw it in but she decides to act inconspicuously. She takes the knife, unwraps it, and hides it in her clothes.

She notices the message on the leather. She finds a position which blocks it from the view of the guards but catches some light from the outside at the same time. To her amazement, she finds out that it's from Syward who's allegedly outside the village. With backup. She wonders about one thing though: When has he learned to write?

In the meantime, the dragons tells Syward positions of any goblins whom Syward can't see himself. Then he takes control of the horse. He himself perches on a big tree sturdy enough to support his weight.

Back in the cave, Hylda cuts her ropes but keeps them on to prevent the guards from noticing. With the knife hidden but prepared, she approaches the fence, crouches down, and starts talking to the guards. They don't understand her and tell her to be silent. When she keeps talking, one of them goes to her and smacks the fence in front of her face with his club. That's when the other one is skewered by an arrow. The first one turns around but doesn't even have time to be surprised because Hylda stabs him in the back.

Working quickly, she cuts the rope holding the gate and pulls the guards in. She steps back outside, grabs a club, and puts the gate back in order. The absence of the guards is suspicious enough as it is. She hides at a spot described in the message.

A little while later, three things happen at a same time. A patrol notices that the prison is unguarded and they run there to investigate while shouting at the others that something is amiss, Syward starts shooting arrows at the revelers, and his horse trots in from the opposite direction. When the attention of everybody is aimed at the threat, the horse breaks into canter. Hylda leaves her hiding spot and runs to meet the horse. She fails to mount the horse properly because she has never ridden one before and ends up hanging over his back like a sack of grain. It doesn't seem to matter to the horse as he turns back and gallops away. Hylda has to admit that she's quite confused - she never knew that Syward's horse was so smart!

The next phase of the plan couldn't be predicted but there were only two options so they prepared for both of them. Majority of the goblins were going to pursue either Syward or Hylda. That the latter proves to be the case is a testament of the direness of their situation.

The dragon stays on his tree and leads the horse back there. As they approach it, Hylda can feel the horse slowing down. She starts to panic and shouts at the horse to keep running when she is suddenly grabbed by her leg and lifted up in the tree. The unburdened horse runs away as quickly as the terrain allows.

Hylda is about to start screaming but she hears a voice in hear head saying "Don't be alarmed. I'm Syward's friend. I'm the backup he wrote about. Now don't make a sound."

There's no time to say more. The dragon enfolds Hylda with his wing and casts the invisibility spell. He can tell right away that Hylda is concealed as well.

A crowd of goblins stampedes under them and follows after the horse. Those in front do not notice in the light of their torches that the step of the horse is lighter.

"Let's go meet Syward now," says the dragon when they are gone and lowers Hylda down. "We are visible again so try to stay concealed. It would take only one straggler to uncover the ruse."

Hylda still can't see the dragon who looks like a displaced darkness and branches. Still, logic tells her that he can't be a ghost so she correctly assumes that it's some kind of a camouflage.

"What are you?" she whispers.

"No time. Syward will explain."

He directs Hylda. They circle around the village and meet Syward in the middle.

"He has captured a goblin again. Go on. The prisoner is knocked out but I can't risk getting seen nonetheless."

She does as told and keeps walking until she can hear Syward calling her in a hushed voice. She reaches him a few moments later and sees that the captured goblin is the chieftain of the village.

"Good evening, Hylda!" he greets her. "I see that you've got the same idea as me and decided to enjoy a stroll in a cool night air."

A dozen things to ask him goes through her mind, each one of them competing with the others for priority. In the end, all she can say is, "Syward, that's the village's chief!"

"Aye. And he's getting heavy. Which is why I'm glad to see you."

"Get going you two!" urges them the dragon.

Hylda is startled a little but when Syward grabs the goblin under his arms, she grabs his legs.

"Don't go towards the border," advises them the dragon. "That's the direction in which the horse and the pursuers went."

"We need to interrogate this guy anyway," grits out Syward, swallowing his remark about the horse hopefully being all right.

The dragon keeps an eye out while they carry the captive away. Syward explains in a hushed voice what have they learned about the situation so far.

"Excuse me, are you deliberately avoiding the most important topic here?" interrupts him Hylda after a while.

"What? Oh, you mean the dragon."

"Dragon?"

"Yes. The very one from legends of my grandparents' village. It's all true. With the exception of the claim that he's a god."

"And you just happen to be friends with him?!"

"The coast is clear at the moment," interjects the dragon. "I'll go fetch the horse."

As he finds out, the horse has managed to escape his pursuers on his own in the meantime. It seems that his natural instincts are working just fine and that no "scrambling of his brain" has occurred.

It takes some time to lead the horse back. When they return, Syward and Hylda are quite far away from the village. The chief is tied to a tree and is coming back to himself slowly.

While Hylda takes care of the horse, Syward and the dragon agree to interrogate the goblin just like the previous one. The dragon proposes to take a helpful approach rather than an intimidating one. He reasons that the chief is more likely to cooperate if Syward poses as someone who can deliver them from the menace that plagues them. On the other hand, the goblins are also probably afraid to betray their unknown master.

"I know who your master is," says Syward when he has the goblin's attention. "The one your ancestors fled from."

The dragon can see it all in the chief's head then. Most goblins know that there's some terrible power giving orders but only the chiefs know how dark it truly is. It dwells in a cave at an edge of the goblin territory on the opposite side from the barony. The goblins bring it human sacrifices and it drinks their blood and discards their carcases. It never walks out during daytime. The chief has never seen it on his own eyes but the dragon has all the clues he needs.

"I've encountered these before!" he tells Syward. "A long time ago when I was still small. They are very dangerous."

"The blood-drinker," continues Syward, repeating after the dragon. "Yes, we know about them. At least some of us. Why do you think your master wants to remain hidden? It fears us! We can get rid of this pestilence for you."

The goblin can't believe his ears. It's too good to be true and his ingrained fear of the thing makes it seem impossible to destroy it. It must be a trick to make the dark one turn on his people!

"You don't believe me, do you?" presses Syward on. "Then tell me why does it need you to bring it food? Yes, it can't go into sunlight. If it's so powerful, it shouldn't be a problem for it to catch something to eat and disappear again before morning."

At this point, the dragon already knows everything.

"You know, I don't need any information from you," dismisses Syward. "We already know everything necessary to take it out."

After a brief argument with the dragon, he goes ahead and proves it by rehashing the information.

"The question is," he continues afterwards. "What are you personally willing to do to free your people?"

At that moment, even Syward himself can sense the goblin's desire to see that creature burned to ashes. Nothing comes out of it though. The chief hangs his head and his eyes start watering in shame.

"Well, we tried," observes the dragon.

_"I hoped that he would help me to lure it out,"_ thinks Syward.

"You'll have to do this job. Once it's in my reach, I'll destroy it."

Once again, the dragon jumps to a conclusion that Syward has no objections. As before, he's right - Syward wants to destroy that creature. What he "heard" about its kind from the dragon rubs him the wrong way. Its actions against the barony (and the kidnapping of Hylda) makes it personal on top of that. He has one big concern though and asks Hylda to accompany him to the dragon. They leave the goblin tied to the tree.

"Before we go to the creature's lair, I'll have to get Hylda back home," he says.

"We have no time for that," protests the woman before the dragon can react. "Besides, someone needs to look after the horse and guard the chief while you two deal with the creature."

"I have to concur," agrees the dragon. "We have a window of opportunity here. We should exploit it. When the bloodsucker is dead, the chief may arrange for a safe passage back."

In the end, Syward relents. He goes back to the prisoner.

"Well, we'll be going to the monster's lair now," he tells him. "Obviously, we can't let you go and warn it so you'll be coming with us. We'll release you afterwards though."

The goblin's fear is evident. He's scared of what will happen when their master disposes of the two humans and finds him there. He won't have any proof that he hasn't led them there.

"You have no chance against it!" he implores.

"Thanks for the warning. I won't underestimate the bugger."

They load the goblin on the horse. There are two options how to travel to the lair. They can either leave the goblin territory by the shortest route and then circle around through wilderness to their destination or they can travel there right away in a straight line. Considering that any goblin pursuers are unlikely to predict the latter, they choose that option. Besides, the dragon can detect sentient enemies better than wildlife.

They reach their destination in afternoon next day. The setting sun illuminates the side of the mountain where the cave entrance is. Perhaps the monster has chosen it to be able to return home even at morning hours. That's good. They need to lure the creature out and such a thing can be done only after sunset. At the same time, attacking shortly before it would be suspicious normally - especially if the creature assumes that the attacker knows about it avoiding sunlight. However, it makes a lot more sense with the way the mountain and the cave are oriented.

"We'll need to time it perfectly," observes the dragon.

"Yes, let it play for time so it could pursue me outside. It won't scare me away for as long as safety is just around the corner."

"You'll have to make look like a miscalculation on your side. Caused by fear, let's say."

"I guess that won't be too difficult if that thing is at least half as scary as the goblin says."

Another thing they have to think about is the dragon's smell. As they find out, it's not much of a problem inside the cave because the air comes out of it. Still, Syward makes some smoking fires at the entrance to prevent the creature from getting an advance warning even after leaving the caves. It's a little bit conspicuous that somebody would try to smoke the creature out when the air goes the other way but they decide not to overestimate the creature's ability to expect such convoluted plans from them. Nothing can be done about the sound of the dragon's heartbeat other than trying to cover it by shouting.

"I can't feel anything alive in there," says the dragon after taking a tentative feel by his passive senses. He suspects that he could find more by sensing actively but he can't risk that obviously.

Syward lights a torch and goes in. He leaves his bow and arrows by the entrance and prepares his ax instead. The dragon makes himself invisible to nullify any chance of being seen by the creature. He keeps reading the man though, just like with the horse before when Syward entered the town. He can see and hear all that Syward does.

There's no sign of the creature anywhere near the entrance so Syward continues deeper. As he progresses, he keeps expecting to see some bones and skulls but there aren't any. It seems like the creature likes to keep its lair clean. After all, there's no reason to keep the bodies around after they have been drained of blood. Their rotting flesh would merely attract vermin.

After some time, he comes to a conclusion that something lives in there indeed - something sentient. And yet, the signs that lead him to this conclusion are of utterly alien kind. The feeling is vastly different from walking into a dwelling of a human (or a goblin for that matter). There are no tools for preparing food nor any chamber for sleeping. Obviously, a blood drinking creature has no need for a kitchen and Syward starts wondering whether it sleeps at all.

He reaches a point where the cave branches. He can't continue deeper from that point because he can't risk letting the creature cut him off from the exit. He backs out instead and waits. Without taking his attention from the darkness in front of him, he tries to remember if there are any crevices behind him which could be used to traverse to area in front if him. He considers briefly going back and making sure but he decides to stand his ground in the end. He wishes that he had his bow and somebody else was providing him with light. It would make the whole act easier if his role was to shoot at anything that moves.

The creature is hungry and some food ventured freely into its lair - that's what works in Syward's favour in the end. It happens when his torch is nearly depleted. He hangs his ax back on his belt and takes his reserve torch instead. As he's lighting it, he sees movement on the ceiling on of the cave. Not having anything else at hand, he throws the rest of the torch at it and backs off hastily while drawing his axe. He hears an angry snarl as the torch hits the target.

For a moment, he's afraid that the new torch will go out and he'll be left in darkness. Then the little flame dancing on its side spreads and he's got light again. Once again, he sees something at the edge of the reach of the torch.

Suddenly, he hears the dragon's voice in his head. That means that he has left his invisibility.

"Syward! I think the creature is blind."

Syward doesn't need to ask how has he noticed it. While he himself has to pay attention to what's happening at the moment, the dragon can examine the images he receives at leisure.

His finding means two things. On one hand, the invisibility spell isn't needed and the dragon can talk to him normally. At the same time, the invisibility spell (and camouflage) is useless. While the creature is blind, it's far from handicapped. The dragon will have to ambush it the same way he would have to ambush a human without the help of magic or masking.

"Don't forget," continues the dragon. "It doesn't mind the light of torches - at least according to what our goblin friend has heard."

_"So it's still playing for time,"_ thinks Syward. _"How are we doing?"_

"The sun is almost touching the horizon."

Syward starts retreating slowly. He wants to make it look like he's luring the creature into the sunlight outside. The dragon tries to detect the creature by his passive senses now that he knows where it is but fails again. Given the circumstances, he doesn't dare to experiment and possibly give his presence away.

As Syward keeps retreating, he focuses on a thin line between causing the creature attack right away and letting it believe that it will be possible to catch him outside. It seems to work. He reaches the entrance at which point he drops the torch and runs out. The fires are still burning strongly so there's plenty of light which is good because the sun has just set.

Syward puts his ax back behind his belt and retrieves his bow and arrows. While he nocks an arrow and backs away from the entrance, he starts shouting at the creature inside. He makes it look like he's trying to lure the creature out.

And that he does. The creature can somehow sense that it's dark outside and decides to attack. It doesn't run on the ground like an ordinary beast, no. It crawls over the ceiling at a speed at which an average human runs on a good road. The goal is probably to make aiming harder. Syward doubts that an arrow would kill it anyway but he's more worried about it getting too close to the dragon and detecting him. He needs to hit it.

What the creature underestimates is Syward's experience. He waits for his shot and lets loose at the right moment. The arrow embeds itself in its... well, it's flesh technically but Syward is more inclined to use a term "matter". The creature looses contact with the rock but keeps its momentum at the same time. It flies over the fires, twists in the air, and lands on its feet several strides in front of Syward. The monster is humanoid but extremely disturbing. There's something thoroughly unwholesome about it. Syward notices that the arrow didn't have any more trouble piercing the creature than, let's say, a deer. The problem is that it doesn't mean the same thing for the creature as for a human.

There's no time to ponder over this. Shortly after the creature lands, the dragon drops behind it, blocking its retreat back into the cave. The creature turns around with a snarl. It's blind alright but its other senses can still perceive the size of the unexpected enemy.

Syward isn't about to let it form a new strategy. He puts another arrow through its neck. He almost wishes he didn't. Once again, it's like putting an arrow in a straw-man or a bundle of wool. Although, the flesh looks more similar to a mushroom than to either of those things.

The dragon doesn't loose any time either. While the creature turns back to Syward (probably to fight its way out through him), he reaches out and impales it on his claws. The creature starts making inhuman shrieks. Syward has to cover his ears.

The dragon doesn't kill (or rather destroy) the abomination right away but examines it first by his active senses. While the procedure brings the dragon the information he desires, it doesn't have the same effect on it as on normal beings. In fact, it doesn't seem to have any effect at all. The creature notices the probe but that's it.

The dragon decapitates the monstrosity and burns the torso. The head is still active but it can't scream any more.

"What is this thing?!" exclaims Syward.

"It's human. Or was. When it was alive."

Syward looks up with an incredulous expression in his face.

"That's how they reproduce," clarifies the dragon. "It requires a compatible host severely weakened by a disease or old age. They probably use some kind of spores which finish the host off and start turning him. After the original body functions stop, new ones begin. In the end, the host becomes this thing. As I've said before, they need blood of living people to survive."

Syward has no words to answer to such a revelation. He lets his thoughts speak for him instead.

"Then I guess I should search this cave in case there's another one in there," he says after a moment.

"I've just probed it but go ahead. It's better to be safe."

As expected, there's no one else there. However, he finds something disturbing - a few scrolls written on in blood. That makes sense - normal ink wouldn't be of much use to blind creatures. At the same time, it's a very alien concept.

It's not the usage of blood that makes Syward uneasy though. What truly gives him creeps is the fact that the creature was intelligent. There's little doubt that the scrolls were written by the monster right in that cave because the blood is too fresh. Syward skewers the scrolls on an arrow and carries them outside.

In the meantime, the head stops twitching but Syward suspects that it's still "alive" at some level. Not for long. The dragon stabs the brain by his claw.

"Take it to the chief," instructs the dragon. "Be careful when you carry it. You are healthy but let's not take any chances. Tell him to scope out its brain and burn it. The brain - he'll need the head to prove its demise to his peers."

"Won't he get infected?"

"From what I know about them, they are more or less immune. That's why you don't get to see any goblin versions of this thing. We should keep that in mind in case more of these come here."

Syward drops the scrolls (along with the arrow) for the dragon to examine. Then he sticks the head on a sharpened stick and descends back to the camp.

The chieftain is speechless when Syward drops the ugly head in front of him and starts undoing his bounds.

"Eww!" exclaims Hylda. "That's what they wanted to feed me to?"

"Unless it turned you into one of them, which seems improbable. If it wanted to make a companion, it would have done so earlier. Maybe it didn't want to share the food."

"How?" asks the goblin finally.

"Nothing you couldn't have done yourself. And with much less risk. Do you know what this thing was?"

The goblin doesn't understand.

"It was a human. A dead one."

He explains quickly.

"To us, they are like a walking disease. Your kind, on the other hand, is safe. Remember that when its buddies come looking for it."

The goblin gasps. Syward ignores his reaction and relays the instructions from the dragon. Carefully, the goblin picks the head up and starts working.

"I've examined its notes," informs the dragon in the meantime. "The alphabet and language are from a region far south where I discovered these creatures before. The dialect is very old though - even when compared to the time of my visit there."

"Have you found out what was it doing here?"

"The notes don't say that directly but I think that something has happened where it came from which has cut their blood supply short. There wasn't enough sustenance to go around so they started to push their weaker members out. It was writing down highlights of its endeavors here. Finding this land, taking control of the goblins, and so on. The notes were probably meant for others of its kind, in case they came this way."

The goblin finishes his rudimentary clean up of the head and attaches it on a sturdy branch, creating a kind of a scepter. Syward's first thought is how creepy it is but then he remembers that he himself wasn't any different not so long ago.

Syward asks about getting a safe passage back to the barony and the goblin promises to try to secure it for them. The dragon comments that the goblin was thinking briefly about getting rid of them and claiming the victory for himself but has discarded the idea because it's clear even to him that the others would never believe him.

As they journey to a nearest village, Syward tells the goblin that he will speak with the authorities in the barony, perhaps the baron himself. The goblin has never heard about the baron so Syward explains a little.

When they reach their destination, Syward and Hylda wait with the horse a safe distance away while the dragon spies on the meeting of the two chieftains. All goes well and they are given an escort to the border.

"That's twice in a row now," says Syward while they wait for the goblins to collect them.

"Let's just say that I have a certain experience with goblins who can't make a difficult decision. They aren't very bright so when I'm careful enough, they can believe that my voice is their own."

"Huh? That simple?"

"What would you do if you heard your own voice in your head?"

"I would think that I'm going crazy."

"Point taken. Alas, goblins don't do that. Going crazy."

As they travel home, the news spread to other villages. Syward doesn't stop anywhere, he doesn't wish to press their luck. After all, a lifetime of conflict isn't so easily forgotten.

When they reach the no man's land, the dragon warns Syward that his friends are ahead. Without having to wait for the dragon's linguistic help, he tells the goblins to stop. Then he whistles a signal that all is safe.

"Well, thanks for the escort," he told the goblins. "Remember, stay away from our land and we'll stay away from yours."

Goblins aren't sentimental so there's no need for any farewell speeches. Syward is quite glad for that.

He and Hylda mount the horse and ride to meet the patrol. Syward's colleagues are amazed to see them both alive.

Syward and Hylda tell them nothing about what was the creature which controlled the goblins, just like the dragon has advised them. They stick to that when they report to the officer back in town and later on to the baron.

"So what was it then?" demands the baron. "If you killed it than you must have taken a good look at it."

"I guess you need to tell him a little bit more," advises the dragon.

"Milord, it wasn't a goblin or anything remotely similar, that's for sure," answers Syward. "And it wasn't human. At least I most sincerely hope so."

"What do you mean?"

Syward answers by hinting at some of the uneasiness he had from the creature. The baron seems reasonably satisfied with his explanation.

Syward relays the willingness of the goblin chieftains to cease hostilities. The baron agrees to declare a ban on hunting goblins on their territory. Syward cautions him that if the peace holds, he'll have to abolish rewards for goblin heads as well. The baron objects that there will always be rogue goblins wanting to steal and pillage in their lands. The dragon comes up with an idea to fold the rangers into the regular troops, have them patrol the border, and penalize them for every goblin who comes through.

"Well, what are we going to do next?" asks Syward when they are out of the capital. Only Hylda is there to hear him but the question is meant for the dragon as well.

"The worshipers are still out there," speaks the dragon to both of them. "It's a loose end which could be dangerous if left unattended. Alas, flying around and hoping to stumble upon something is hardly a way to find them. The search needs to be narrowed down by following rumors first and that's not something I can do."

"You want to recruit more people?" asks Syward. It sounds awfully unwise to him.

"Not quite."

Something about the dragon's response doesn't sit right with Syward. He finds what when Hylda reacts.

"So that's why you've been going on and on about what a great and responsible man Syward is!" she exclaims.

"Unbelievable!" joins her Syward. "Has anyone ever told you that you push too hard?"

"As a matter of fact, no," returns the dragon.

The fact remains that there's nothing left for Hylda in her home town and that Syward is done with hunting goblins. They stay together in the end and settle down in the area where the village of Syward's grandparents once was. Not exactly there but halfway between it and the road.

The dragon demolishes the ruin of his "church" and brings them the building stones. They use some of them to lay foundations of their new homestead.

Hostilities between the humans and the goblins are vastly reduced. The goblins don't perform any raids into the barony but they sometimes ambush merchants traveling on the border road. They mostly leave Syward and Hylda alone though, probably for their service in getting rid of the blood-drinker. Syward doesn't have any illusions that they will remember for long.

In following years, Syward doesn't hear any rumors about any dragon worshipers or more blood-drinkers. It's probably better that way because he's got his hands full with his family - and a large one it is. It may seem unwise in his age but as time goes by, Syward doesn't seem to be affected by his years as harshly as others. At this rate, it doesn't seem that Hylda is going to outlive him by more than two decades.

Per their agreement, the dragon doesn't reveal himself to their children. However, Syward is going to reveal his existence to his oldest sons when they are old enough. Whether they choose to believe him or not will depend on them.

The dragon does some limited surveying of the lands surrounding the barony and the goblin territory. Syward was right - there's a budding human settlement on the other side of the wilderness which lies east of the goblin territory. They are smaller than the barony but they have access to the sea. Syward's assumption that they could be a threat is utterly ludicrous at this point. The dragon finds a few more settlements after broadening the search. Some of them are known to the people of the barony (because of occasional traders passing through), some of them are not.

Throughout all this time, the dragon practices his magic and grows in size. He manages to discover a few simple magical patterns and a few specialized versions of the one he has got already but neither he nor Syward stumble upon any magical knowledge created by others.

In the end, the dragon comes to a decision that it's best to leave Syward and his family to live their lives without his interference. As he said, there's not much for him to do without more helpers anyway. It's time to go to sleep again.

He decides not to go as far as before but it's clear that it needs to be away from civilization. He finds a spot in wilderness northwest from the barony. The place is unlikely to be reached by expanding territories of any of the surrounding societies within next century. Besides a forest in distance, there are no resources there which could tempt any colonizers. Even the land is unsuitable for farming or pasture.

Most importantly, there's a convenient cave system. It's deepest chamber can house the dragon comfortably and is accessible by two tunnels only. An idea strikes the dragon.

He flies there with Syward. It's the first time he rides on his back.

The plan for the upcoming hibernation has two parts: physical and magical. The physical part is quite simple - use one of the tunnels as an entrance and the other as an exit. They rig the entry one for a cave-in and wall up the exit one.

Syward does his best to make the barrier look inconspicuous but it's obvious that anyone with a good light will be able to see it. That's where the second part of the plan comes in. While Syward watches from the outer side, the dragon goes in and casts an area version of his invisibility spell so that it covers the wall as well.

The result is quite mind bending for Syward. When outside, the effect of the spell is quite comprehensibly for him - he can't see that which is protected by the spell, as if it was gone. The same applies down there as well and yet the result is so different to an outside observer. Both the wall and the tunnel disappear all right but that doesn't mean that he sees a dark hole in the rock.

Overcome by nausea, he looks away. The dragon waits for him to collect himself. When Syward looks back, he has to admit that an explorer stumbling into these caves would never find the tunnel. By visual means, that is. A blind man going purely by touch and echo could find it (unless he broke his neck first).

"Well, it seems that it works," says the dragon and the wall reappears. Once again, it's quite nauseating for Syward.

They fly back in silence, for the second and last time. Syward understands that the parting time is nigh but he can't think of anything that hasn't been said already.

They meet with Hylda and say their goodbyes. As planned, she doesn't know where the lair is but Syward is going to tell her when he feels that death is coming. Hylda will then relay the information to one of their children and so on. When the time for the awakening comes, somebody can collect him there. If the chain is broken, no matter. Somebody will meet the dragon where the village once was.

The dragon doesn't stick around after he makes himself invisible and flies away. He flies straight back to his hideout and starts hunting, just like the last time. When he can eat nothing more, he retreats in the caves.

Also like the last time, he barricades the entrance but only lightly and he makes sure it looks natural. Then he uses the entrance tunnel and collapses it behind him. The wall in the other tunnel holds for which the dragon is very grateful because it would be quite awkward to bother Syward again.

He casts the invisibility spell and goes to sleep. It's time to ponder over mechanics of magic again.

* * *

Emmett and Rose woke up. Their sensitive ears could hear Jasper and Esme talking in hushed voices.

"I don't mind putting an old geezer as a protagonist of a sub-arc," argued Jasper. "However, a romance between him and a much younger woman is way too weird."

"Hey, have you ever seen Sean Connery? Some men are getting more handsome with time."

Emmett and Rose took a look at each other and then at the others.

"Well, let's get to work," proclaimed Emmett and stood up.


	7. Fifty Shades Debugged

Fifty Shades Debugged

A supervisor entered a control room. There were four control stations, each of them manned by two people. In addition, there were several aides and a coordinator who was in charge.

"Sir?" the coordinator greeted the newcomer.

"We've decided to provide this operation with some oversight," replied the man brusquely. "We don't want any further mishaps."

"Very well, sir. The vehicle carrying the drones will arrive to the deployment zone shortly."

The supervisor nodded and took a seat.

"The deployment vehicle has reached the destination," announced an operator after a while. "May I release the drones?"

"Sure, of course!" confirmed the coordinator.

"Now wait a minute," protested the supervisor and stood up. "I am the one who should give such orders."

"I was under impression that you were here to observe. Do you wish to take full control over the operation?"

To be honest, the supervisor had no idea what would that even entail.

"No, that's your job. But orders like this one should come from me."

"Very well, be my guest."

The supervisor swallowed his indignation and stepped forward.

"Release. The drones!" he intoned theatrically, saying it as two separate sentences. Obviously, he had wanted to say such a thing for a long time.

Three screens showing visual feeds from each unit brightened up as a door in front of them opened and they jumped out.

"The vehicle is leaving," announced the operator.

The coordinator looked at the supervisor questioningly. The supervisor brushed him off with a gesture. The coordinator walked to another control station and told them to take point with their drone.

What they didn't see on their screens was what the co-driver in the vehicle saw.

"What was that?" he yelped and turned around.

"What was what?" asked the driver.

"Nothing. I thought I saw something in the wing mirror."

And so, unbeknown to them or the operators, they were returning home with a tracking bug.

Back in the mission area, everything seemed to go according to the plan. The drones reached the basement and barged in. That was the point where things started to go downhill - it was empty. No people, no computers, no tables or chairs.

"Where the hell are they?" cursed the coordinator.

That was when they started to experience inexplicable connection problems. They didn't realize it right away but their orders couldn't get through because of a DoS attack on the drones. Some of the packets reached the destinations but the orders weren't complete and there was a lot of timeouts. The protocol didn't account for such a situation so they were basically cut off.

"What's happening?!" boomed the supervisor.

"I think I might have an idea," spoke an operator. "Let me check something quickly."

That was the moment when AVG on his computer decided to download an update.

"What? No! Not now!" he yelled and attempted to cancel the operation. It didn't work so he pressed control, alt, delete and attempted to kill the application.

An error box popped out: Detected an external attempt to terminate the application during an update. Entering full system diagnostic. Please do not use your computer for next several hours.

The operator started pressing control, alt, delete again frantically until the blue screen appeared. That was the last straw. He grabbed the monitor, lifted it above his head, and yelled, "Argh! Damn us! Damn us all to hell!" before smashing the monitor on the floor.

"Wait, we are using our own system?" asked the supervisor.

"Yes, company policy," confirmed the coordinator.

"Well, that explains a lot."

* * *

The dragon stirs. He can tell right away that it hasn't been a whole century yet. That's not a big problem, there are only several years left anyway. What's more interesting is the reason for his early rousing. He felt as if somebody called him to wake up. He breaks through the wall and crawls out, clearing away outer barriers.

The country around is bleaker than he remembers. A large swath of the forest in distance is missing. It seems to have an effect on the local ecosystem.

The most interesting thing is a small hut nearby. The dragon is detecting a human there and the signature seems familiar. It must be one of Syward's descendants.

Closer inspection reveals desolate state of the abode. There's a dilapidated animal pen on one side. It probably used to hold sheep or goats but it's empty now. There's a small garden on the other side which has fared only marginally better. There are some sickly plants but nothing edible.

He probes the insides of the abode. There's an old man sleeping on a cot. He's ill and suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. The dragon is sure that he's Syward's descendant.

A voice-over starts, with a new narrator. It's a voice of an old woman.

**"I never gave much stock to beliefs of my granduncle Aylmer as a child. To me, he was just an old fool clinging to stories told to him by his grandma when he was a child. His self-imposed exile was most certainly more harebrained than anything I've ever done. But looking back, I can't but admire his dedication to the family." **

The probing wakes the man up. He tries to rasp something. He doesn't succeed but the dragon can pick out two things from his thoughts. One is merely a call that he's inside the hut which is quite redundant considering that the dragon obviously knows that already. The other is a question whether it's truly him. That seems like a pointless question to ask but the dragon understands what the man means.

"Yes, it is me," he tells the man. "Don't move, I'll be back."

There's a barrel for water inside but it's empty so getting some water is the first order of business. The dragon opens the door carefully and reaches in for a bucket which is by the entrance. His actions are extremely clumsy due to his size.

He finds a spring and fills the bucket. Most of the water is spilled out by the time he gets back but it will suffice for the moment. Before pushing the bucket back inside, he grabs a pebble, breathes some fire on it, and drops it in the water so it's not cold.

"Drink," he orders.

The hermit falls over the edge of the cot and starts crawling to the bucket.

"I'll get you something to eat."

The dragon flies to the forest. Yes, people were there for lumber and left again.

The game is sparse but he manages to find a boar. He eats it quickly and searches for something smaller. He finds a hare and examines it for any diseases. The ordeal knocks the animal out.

When he gets back, the old man is sleeping again - on the floor.

"Wake up! Pass me a bowl."

The man does as he's told with some difficulty. The dragon slits the hare's neck and lets it bleed into the bowl.

"Drink a little of this. It will give you some strength."

Because his breath is no ordinary fire and unsuitable for preparing food, he flies to fetch some wood. Afterwards, he helps the man skin the little animal and makes a fire, shielding it by his own wings. He cooks the morsel by holding it above the flames. Obviously, he doesn't need a skewer. The man crawls out and warms himself by the fire. It's windy outside but the dragon creates a sort of a tent in front of the hut.

"Thank you, my lord," he rasps. He seems embarrassed.

"Don't talk, just think. And I'm not your lord. Now, tell me, should we worry about anybody coming here?"

The man concentrates and thinks _"It's unlikely. No one travels through here."_

"You are Syward's grandson, right?"

_"Yes. I have so much to tell you."_

"All in good time. What's your name?"

"Aylmer," answers the man out loud. Maybe he needed to hear it himself.

"Eat. I'll fetch more water."

Aylmer is fast asleep again when the dragon returns. He leaves the bucket in front of the hut and goes to collect some more wood. Then he hunts again.

Herbs are one of the few supplies still left in the hut so Aylmer makes himself some tea when he wakes up. Next day, he is well enough to share what he knows with the dragon.

Syward's and Hylda's kids turned out to be quite promising. Those of them who were told about the dragon had no proof that he truly existed but they had no reason not to believe their parents. However, all of them knew about the monster which had controlled the goblins and about the missing "dragon worshipers" and all of them acknowledged the importance of those issues. Hence, they agreed to conduct search for any leads on these.

Of the former, they found no trace and perhaps it was better that way. A sure way to track down some of those monsters would be to go to the ancient city mentioned by the dragon and start from there but they didn't have sufficient resources for such an expedition, they weren't sure whether they were going to be able to find the city at all, and there was always the danger that the abominations still had a strong presence in the city and would capture the spies.

As for the latter, there was some marginal success. One of Syward's son traveled with a group of merchants to a land far in the south and heard rumors there about some crazy pilgrims worshiping a giant, winged, fire-breathing god. They had settled there for some time many years earlier and attempted to convert the local people to their faith. They were driven away, of course, most probably further south. Again, there weren't sufficient resources for a bigger expedition so it was left for later.

Alas, there was no later. Aylmer was the only grandchild who believed the story about the dragon, which was why Hylda told him where the dragon was sleeping. Everybody else went about his or her own business (that is, unrelated to the dragon - as a family, they have been always pretty tightly knit). Their parents didn't try to persuade anybody otherwise. After all, they had never seen this dragon themselves and Syward and Hylda told them how he felt about blind faith anyway. At least everybody kept their mouths shut but that was probably motivated by fear of being ridiculed like the village of Syward's grandparents.

As for the barony, it grew, swallowed other settled territories, and eventually became a kingdom. The current monarch is its first king. The only real competition around is a duchy on the other side of the goblin reservation. It's smaller but it has an access to sea.

As expected, the goblins were pushed back gradually until the mountain where Syward and the dragon had defeated the blood-drinker became a center of their territory. That's where the retreat ended. Both because the site had a special significance to them and because the people on the other side pushed in the opposite direction. At the present time, the goblins form a "natural barrier" between the kingdom and the duchy. Their territory is narrow but long, completely separating the two countries and thus ensuring peace indirectly. Both nations are quite satisfied with the arrangement and the goblins do not protest much either.

"And how have you ended up here, all alone?" asks the dragon.

"Well, our king needed wood some thirty years ago. Rather than devastating his own land, he decided to take it from outside. I guess his motivation was also denial of the resource to lands outside of his rule. I couldn't have cared less but the excavation was happening at your doorstep. So I joined in to make sure that you remained undiscovered. I worried unnecessarily, whatever you and Syward did to conceal you worked perfectly. The excavation stopped after some time anyway, the transportation cost was too high. Afterwards, I decided to build myself a little abode here, perhaps even bring somebody along. It was a foolish notion. This land is one of the most inhospitable around."

"That's why I chose this place. Although I have to admit that your king made it even better for the purpose. That still doesn't explain what were you doing here, ahead of time, dying of hunger."

"Don't worry, it's not a matter of worship. I'm here because of Osith."

The dragon gives him a questioning look.

"She's my grandniece," clarifies the old man. "She is, how to put this, magical. We don't know how exactly is that possible. Maybe it's because of Syward's and Hylda's exposure to you."

"I see," comments the dragon. And he can truly see how the girl could be a great asset - with proper training. As for the source of her magic, he has as little idea as Aylmer. He asks about her abilities.

"Last time I checked, she couldn't cast any actual spells like you can."

"Obviously. Discovering a useful pattern is not so easy. Have you tried to search for any knowledge which could help her?"

It's clear to him that Osith won't be able to do anything without exact instructions. He himself needed a few decades just to process the theory. Then again, it was in sleep and his theory was somewhat deeper that what a human practitioner needed.

"That's the problem. She isn't taking it seriously. I tried to talk some sense into her and make her understand what an important heritage it is but she thought that I'm just using her condition to reinforce my own beliefs. So I moved here permanently with an intention of waking you up prematurely. The time was nigh anyway and to be honest, I feared that my old age would get me even sooner. I couldn't find anything in there besides the old cave-in. So I thought that perhaps I could reach you with my mind instead."

"I didn't hear anything until recently."

"Yes. I guess I didn't put my heart into it. But then I got sick and fell behind with everything. I ran out of food and in the end I wasn't even strong enough to go for water. Only when the death was near I was able to truly focus."

"And your relatives just left you here with no backup?"

"They don't know about this place. If they did, they would drag me back to the kingdom."

"Very well. We'll stay here until you get better and the we'll move out."

Aylmer wants to protest but the dragon will hear nothing of it.

The narrating voice returns:

**"I've never broached this subject with the dragon so I don't know if he truly believed him. Personally, I think that Aylmer lied by omission. What he had feared more than anything was for the time of the awakening to pass and the dragon not showing up at Osbert's estate. That would mean that all he ever believed was a lie. He was willing to vanish in wilderness to avoid that. And this kind of blind faith the dragon disapproves of the most." **

During next few days, Aylmer's health improves. However, it seems that his old age is catching up with him. Moreover, the dragon has hunted out all animals around.

"Is there anybody in your family who can take care of you?" he asks. "Somebody reliable who can be trusted. And with resources."

"Sure. My cousin Osbert is a big merchant. His father was the one who found the trace of the cultists down south. His estate and warehouses are outside of a city so there will be less unwanted eyes. Incidentally, the location is right where the old village once was so he would have been your contact if I had died."

"Interesting. Perhaps you aren't the only one who believed your grandmother?"

"He's a practical man. It's a good location so it would be no loss for him even if you didn't exist."

Aylmer gathers what few personal possessions he has in the hut and they prepare to travel. Aylmer is unfit to ride on the dragon like Syward did and the dragon is going to need his legs for take-off so he can't do that while carrying the man. With much difficulty, they get Aylmer wrapped in animal furs and strapped on the dragon's back. It's going to be clumsy but the dragon is big enough now so it's not going to be a problem. He makes himself (and his passenger) invisible and takes off.

The dragon sees the city first. It's located further away in the direction of the goblin territory than the old village was. In fact, it's almost entirely on what used to be the goblin territory. It's big and dirty and gives a sense of an urban sprawl that is young and already rotting. The dragon hopes that the other towns has not become such a monstrosity. An interesting detail is that he can detect goblin presence there. Maybe that's why nobody ever bothered to make the city cleaner.

The dragon feels something like a tickle in his gut. He felt something like that once before - when he discovered the blood-drinkers. This is somewhat stronger but it doesn't make any sense. He hasn't felt anything like that around goblins before. Maybe it's not the goblins themselves but their role in this world. Their international role in being a barrier between the kingdom and the duchy, their position in human societies, and their immunity to the disease that is the blood-drinkers.

Osbert's home and office is where the village once was. His warehouses are on the side facing the city. There's farmland on the opposite side, all the way to Syward's and Hylda's homestead. The dragon notices that it has been renovated sometime in the past. Again, the dragon discovers goblins working in the area.

There are too many witnesses at the main house so he lands behind the old abode. He lowers Aylmer on the ground. It's obvious that he's not well and can't go search for his cousin. He walks around the house and waves at a nearest farmer.

"Who goes there?" shouts the man. He's armed by a wooden baton but he hasn't drawn it yet.

"Aylmer, Osbert's cousin," rasps Aylmer when the man gets nearer. "I need to talk to him."

"I don't know you."

"I don't know you either. Tell him I'm here. It's about Osith."

The man mules it over in his mind. Then he calls two goblins to watch the stranger. He uses vocabulary of the local language but copies the structure of the goblin one. Aylmer sits on a bench in front of the house and starts drowsing.

The man returns after a while.

"Master Osbert is busy but he'll come in a moment," he says.

He studies Aylmer, trying to fit him to the description Osbert has given him.

"You don't look well," he adds. "Do you want some water?"

Maybe he doesn't want Osbert to be mad at him in case the stranger is really his cousin. Aylmer nods and the man sends a goblin to a well.

Osbert arrives some time later with a bodyguard in tow. It takes him a moment to recognize his cousin.

"Aylmer! You look terrible!" he admonishes him and commands the men to get him in his home.

"No, I need to talk to you!" protests Aylmer. "Here. Alone."

Osbert is about to tell him to be silent but then he admits that since it's about Osith, it might be important. He gives the others appropriate instructions and helps Aylmer inside the old house.

"What happened?" he asks once the old man is seated.

"I was this close from death," admits Aylmer while Osbert rummages in a cupboard. "But greater power wanted me to stay for a little while longer."

Osbert finds a herbal syrup and feeds Aylmer a spoonful.

"Well, where's Osith?" demands Osbert and looks in a barrel for water. Empty.

Aylmer doesn't understand. Has she left while he was gone? There's no time for questions.

"Go to that window over there and look outside," he says instead and points at one of the windows on the backside of the house.

Now it's Osbert's turn to be confused. Is the girl supposed to be there? Nonetheless, he does as he's asked.

He looks out and he doesn't see anything. Then something changes in the way he sees the wood behind the house. Something like bending of light. He wouldn't notice it normally if it didn't appear right in front of his eyes. Then the dragon moves and it takes a moment for his camouflage to adapt.

"It's true!" he cries out. "It was all true!"

He understands exactly what he sees and why.

"Keep it down," cautions him Aylmer. "He'll talk to you now. You know how."

Osbert takes a breath and nods.

"Pleased to meet you," says the dragon.

Not knowing what else to say, Osbert answers, "Likewise." He shakes his head and adds, "This is how grandpa Syward must have felt."

"Quite. There will be time to talk later. Take care of Aylmer and meet me back here."

The old man is moved into the main house where he's bathed, fed, and put in a bed. It's getting dark when Osbert returns. He's half-tempted to ask to see the dragon on his own eyes in his full glory but he discards the idea as childish.

"You keep goblins here," observes the dragon as an opening.

"Yes. In case another of those dead blood-drinkers arrives," explains (or rather excuses) Osbert. "This is as far as their kind is allowed and only on my land. Deeper in the kingdom, they would get killed on sight. The rules aren't so strict in the city and in the rest of the territory that was originally theirs."

"Are they free to leave?"

"Sure. But they've got nowhere to go."

"I see. Tell me everything that happened since Aylmer left."

Osbert starts talking and the dragon relays everything to Aylmer.

According to Osbert, Osith's attitude has gotten even worse since Aylmer's departure. This culminated a few months ago when she left the kingdom.

_"She left alone?!"_ exclaims Aylmer in his head.

After Osbert gets over the novelty of hearing another mental voice, he answers, "No, Cuthbert joined her."

Cuthbert is Osith's cousin and according to Osbert, every bit as irresponsible and rash as Osith. He supported her rebellious behavior in past few years. There's little doubt that he helped to plan their departure. According to available information, they went east, to the coast. Most probably to the duchy.

"This is serious," comments the dragon. "If people learn about her magic, it will not only put her in danger but it will also disrupt the society. It won't be as bad as me getting seen in broad daylight but every bit as bad as, let's say, discovering the blood-drinkers - and understanding what they are."

"So we are in agreement, she needs to be collected."

They believe that it should be pretty straightforward. The dragon can offer to share his knowledge of magic with the girl. It's unlikely that she will resist such a temptation.

As usual, this isn't something the dragon can do alone. Fortunately, Osbert has a perfect candidate to accompany the dragon - one of his sons.

"His name his Syward but don't expect him to be like his namesake too much," he elaborates. "He's far more domestic and far less adventurous than him. But he'll be surely eager to join you once he gets over the shock. That is, unless he's got too much work."

The dragon learns that this Syward is also younger than his namesake when they met. He's a charcoal burner and lives with his family nearby. His wife ought to be able to handle things there without him for a while.

Next day, Osbert and his bodyguard ride off to Syward's homestead. Osbert is carrying a long package which the dragon knows to contain a sword made of good steel. Quite a costly thing.

Osbert leaves the bodyguard with the horses and asks to talk with Syward in private. His meeting with the dragon follows the usual pattern - shock, acceptance, pride, getting to businesses. He's as concerned about the situation as anybody else.

"They've got a few months of head-start," he muses. "How are we, I mean me, going to catch up with her? And what if she isn't there any more?"

"We'll fly over the goblin reservation," answers the dragon. "You'll ride on my back."

"On your back?" repeats Syward in disbelief.

"Not like on a horse, that would create drag."

Syward has no idea what that is but Osbert has received a crude explanation.

"We've made a rudimentary rig for you," he explains. "Not like a horse saddle, you won't sit straight up on the dragon. You need to be more prone, as flat as possible."

"That doesn't sound pleasant," remarks Syward, eying the dragon's coarse scales. There are ridges where he's supposed to sit.

"That's what the padding is for. It will be a short trip anyway."

"Very well, I'll go explain to my family and pack for the trip."

"Don't forget to pack this," says Osbert and passes him the sword. "I trust you still remember how to use it."

Syward unsheathes the weapon and swings it a few times. Normally, he would be ecstatic but in the light of the situation, the sword seems like an appropriate complement.

"Thank you. I'll take good care of it," he says.

"This is for last resort only," cautions him Osbert. "We don't want to start a diplomatic incident."

Syward is ready in an hour. He attaches his pack to the dragon's harness and mounts up. The dragon casts the spell and they both disappear.

"Can you hear me?" he projects afterwards. "Don't answer, think it."

_"Yes."_

"And we are still invisible too. Good."

That's not such a breakthrough. After all, nothing leaves the ward. However, it's clear to the dragon that he ought to learn how to communicate with people outside sometime in the future - at least with some select people.

They take off. In about an hour, they reach what used to be the lair of the blood-drinker. Now the mountain looks like a honeycomb and it's teeming with goblins. The dragon doesn't have time to gather more information at the moment so he decides to come back later.

When they land in the duchy, Syward is quite eager to get off the dragon's back. There's a small town near the wood they are in. It's unlikely that Osith and Cuthbert has passed through there but Syward needs to buy a horse. Not cheap but his father gave him enough money. He leaves his pack and the sword on the dragon.

As expected, the innkeeper hasn't seen anybody matching their description. Syward returns with a passable horse and some supplies. He transfers his things on the horse and helps the dragon out of the harness. They stash it in case it's needed later again.

They start their journey to the main harbor of the duchy, which also happens to be the biggest city of the country. Just like in the kingdom, this city is not the capital. It seems like a good place to start. The dragon can use his senses to detect usage of magic in quite a wide area. Any magic user is most likely going to be Osith.

When they arrive, the dragon makes a cursory scouting of the city. It's all that anybody could expect from a major harbor. The only surprise, albeit a minor one at this point, are goblins working in the docs. That's a step further than in the kingdom (where goblin presence is limited only to areas originally wrenched from them).

There's little point in trying to ask around about Osith so they camp near the city. The dragon doesn't detect anything in the area for next few days. Syward starts wondering whether their information is even accurate. What if Osith and Cuthbert moved on in the meantime?

Fortunately, their patience pays off in the end. The dragon detects a small magical disturbance on one of the roads leading to the city. It's like a stone dropping in water and making waves. Syward starts packing hastily while the dragon flies to investigate.

"I've managed to lock onto the caster," he reports. "The person is going to the city."

Syward rides there while the dragon continues to the site of the incident. There are three people lying unconscious on the road - two guards and an officially looking civilian. They have been knocked out by magic. It doesn't seem like it was a concussive force. It feels like something more on a biological side but the dragon can't tell more. One of them does have a concussion but that's probably from falling from a horse. There's a stunned horse resting nearby and two more some distance away. Judging by the magical residue, it was very crude piece of magic - most definitely not an actual spell.

The dragon has a tough decision to make. He can either do nothing or he can probe the men's minds and possibly muddle parts of their memories of the incident. He confers with his companion.

"If Osith and Cuthbert are responsible, then we can assume that they had the wherewithal to be discreet," muses Syward. "I'd say leave them be."

The dragon agrees. While exposure of magic would be a serious thing, getting involved would do more harm than good if the caster wasn't Osith. The dragon's duty is to hide his own existence, not the existence of supernaturalness. Still, he hopes that if the girl is involved, that she is being careful not to expose her magic too much.

Following the dragon's directions, Syward enters the city. The dragon climbs higher and circles above it. They maintain connection so he isn't invisible, just masked. Syward stables his horse and leaves most of his things with it but he takes his sword hidden in a bedroll with him.

The harbor itself is so large that it goes through two districts. One is for merchants, warehouses, and ship officers while the other is for goblins and other dock-workers and sailors. The latter is where the contact stops.

Syward arrives to a dirty, dilapidated pub. There's an armed human bouncer by the entrance. He's accompanied by a goblin who's technically unarmed but Syward guesses that the plank which is leaning by the wall next to him could be used as an improvised weapon.

As he stands there and contemplates whether he can just walk in there, a sailor approaches and walks in, giving the two bouncers a slight nod. Following his example, Syward heads in as well.

"Hey, I haven't seen you around yet," stops him the human. "Where are you going?"

Syward is very little like his namesake indeed.

"It's not a private club," advises him the dragon. "Just tell him that you aren't local and that you are meeting Osith there. Be vague, if possible."

"I've just arrived to the city," answers Syward. "I'm meeting a relative of mine here."

"Yeah? And who that might be?"

After a brief hesitation, Syward divulges the name.

"Don't know that name," responds the bouncer. "How does she look?"

It's when he gets the description does Syward receive the man's full attention.

"Yes, I've seen her," he admits. "You say you are related to her?"

"Yes," confirms Syward patiently.

"We'll see. I hope you aren't pulling my leg. Follow me."

The man tells the goblin to stay put and walks inside. He doesn't tell Syward to unroll the bedroll.

The inn is as seedy as they get. Half of the staff are goblins and a surprisingly big portion of the clientele as well. The bouncer leads Syward to a table in the back.

And there they are - Osith and Cuthbert, sitting at a table with a goblin. He looks important and dangerous. There's a few goblins hovering around, his bodyguards probably. The voice-over returns.

**"I've got to say, I didn't expect anybody to show up to collect us." **

"Do you know this guy?" asks the bouncer.

Osith is so surprised that she can't speak for a moment. She doesn't have to, Cuthbert beats her to the punch.

"Uncle Syward!" he exclaims. "What a hell are you doing here?!"

The answer is self-evident and sitting right next to him.

"What is the meaning of this?" demands the goblin in a surprisingly good language.

"I need to talk to Osith," answers Syward. It's obvious to him that he's interrupting something illicit but there's no going back.

"It's not a good time now," hisses the girl, confirming his observation.

The goblin's bodyguards are looking at their boss, waiting for a sign what to do. Alas, he's not giving them any indication in either way for the time being. Cuthbert, sensing the tension, rushes to defuse it.

"Wait, wait, wait," he says quickly. "He could be helpful."

"In what?" asks Syward. His question is mostly ignored.

"This wasn't part of the deal," reminds them the goblin.

"Trust me, he's one of the most cautious people in our family," maintains Cuthbert. "It will be much smoother with his help. So, your part of the bargain have just got much easier."

The goblin gives the bodyguards a sign to stand down.

"Two people or three, that's not such a big difference," he admits.

He stands up and approaches Syward.

"You wear a proud name," he tells him.

Syward doesn't realize for a moment that the goblin is talking about his namesake. When he does, he's amazed that some goblins still remember what he and Hylda did for them.

"So I'm always told," he responds. "I have to warn you though, I'm not like him very much."

The goblin doesn't answer and turns to Osith himself.

"You know where to meet us," he tells her. "Just the three of you, no one else."

With that, he and his men turn and leave. They don't use the main entrance and head for the kitchen instead.

Osith is silent.

Cuthbert approaches Syward and tells him, "I know what are you going to say but please, this is really important. Not just for Osith."

Syward ignores him because he's absolutely certain that meeting a dragon is far more important. He steps toward Osith instead and tells her, "Let's not speak here. I have to introduce you to someone. Immediately!"

"And why should I go with you?!" snaps the girl back. Something about her tone and even her very voice makes Syward want to slap her to teach her some respect to her elders. Luckily, he has experience with two daughters and realizes perfectly well that Osith isn't one of them.

"We have time," admits Cuthbert. "We can explain on the way."

_"Can I take him along?"_ asks Syward in his head.

The dragon considers it. If Cuthbert learns about him, he'll have to go back with them to the kingdom. For now, at least. On the other hand, it seems that he and Osith have managed to make a contact with a leader of local goblins. A smart one to boot. Maybe he should stay and cultivate the relationship.

"Let's take him along," he decides in the end.

"Well, let's go," he declares and makes an upward gesture with his hands.

Osith rolls her eyes and gets up from the table.

They keep their talk general at their way back to the stables. It wouldn't do if someone overheard them talking about magic or their dealings with goblins.

Only when they retrieve the horse and are out of the city gates does Syward ask, "What the hell is this about? Why have you attacked those people on the road?"

"How the heck do you know about that?" exclaims Osith.

"Your usage of magic," utters Syward. "It's like a campfire to other magic users."

That's not entirely true, not necessarily. Syward actually isn't sure whether other magic users are capable of detecting magic the way the dragon does. The phrase "other magic users" catches Osith's attention.

"I hope that those three men won't tell any stories when they wake up," he adds. "By the way, one of them is hurt badly."

Osith ignores his comment because she's more interested in what he said before but Cuthbert assures him instead.

"Oh, don't worry. It was planned to the finest detail. They'll think that somebody pushed them from behind from their horses."

"What do you mean, other magic users?" Osith asks finally. "You aren't here alone?"

Syward turns to her and answers, "No, obviously not. How else would I find you?"

"Well, who's with you?"

"A proper spell-caster."

"Who!"

"An old family friend. Aylmer tracked him down for you."

"Aylmer?" exclaims Cuthbert. "That old geezer?"

"Indeed. I was as surprised as you are. He really came through for you. You should be grateful, at least, if not respectful."

"We'll see when I meet this man," dismisses Osith. "Is it safe? What do we know about him and his intentions?"

"My father trusts him implicitly and I've traveled with him for some time now."

Osith grumbles something. It doesn't seem like either holds much stock with her. And yet, she follows Syward. While his story seems unbelievable, the possibility of gaining magical knowledge is too appealing. The only thing that worries her are potential risks. What if this magic practitioner wants to use her somehow?

"Are you going to answer my question?" Syward interrupts her musing. "What is this all about? Why have you attacked those people?"

"Oh, we were stealing a package of blank errand permits for goblins," answers Cuthbert. "They don't actually allow them to travel freely but they are useful for explaining their presence outside of districts where they are supposed to be."

"Are you serious? Do you know what a gangster like that might do with those?" exclaims Syward. He's talking about their goblin associate.

"Come on! They are useless without a good forger to fill them out. If they have that kind of resources, they can fabricate blank ones as well if they wish."

"You don't give a damn, I get it," gives up Syward. "Still, that doesn't explain what's in it for you."

"Obviously, we are getting something in return."

"And what is that?"

Cuthbert doesn't answer and gives Osith a look instead.

She doesn't see why to keep it a secret so she answers, "A book. A grimoire."

Syward doesn't have to asks for clarification. Obviously, they are talking about a book about magic. That leaves him confused momentarily though. The goblin seemed smarter than others but not that smarter.

"He doesn't actually have it, you see," explains Cuthbert. "But he can help us get to it."

"Since when do you take your gift seriously, Osith?" sneers Syward.

The girl doesn't answer but the narrator does.

**"Well, I guess the lure of power was greater than my desire to disappoint my family. Still, obtaining magical knowledge on my own terms still felt like sufficient defiance." **

"Help you how?" Syward asks Cuthbert when Osith doesn't reply.

"The sewers," answers the boy. "His people are going to lead us through the sewers, which are kind of their domain, to the harbor. Most outlets are protected by bars but they say that they can get us through."

That confuses Syward even more.

"You ought to start from the beginning," he insists but changes his mind immediately. "Or you know what? Let's leave it till after you meet... the guy." He stumbles at the end of the sentence because he can't find an appropriate word and he can't say "dragon" yet.

Osith doesn't talk for the rest of the way but Syward and Cuthbert make a small talk. Syward finds out that Cuthbert misses home on one hand but is also excited to be abroad.

Finally, the moment comes. They arrive to a clearing in a wood and the dragon lands in front of them with a heavy thud. There are no people in vicinity so he doesn't bother with a full camouflage when he drops his invisibility and merely keeps his color adjusted to match their surroundings.

Both Osith and Cuthbert understand perfectly well what they see, of course. Cuthbert's reaction is similar in some ways to those of the others' but far more amusing. He doesn't look like an awed adult - he beams like a little child whose all secret wishes has come true at once.

On the other hand, Osith's reaction is very singular. She stares for a second or two, then she folds her arms and starts laughing.

"So it was all true," she declaims finally. Her tone is as disrespectful as it possibly can be when you are standing in front of a dragon.

Syward wants to snap at her but the dragon speaks first.

"Indeed it was," he emits so all three people can hear it in their heads.

Osith recoils from the experience. While the dragon has learned how to be as non-intrusive as possible, she's more sensitive to such things than others.

"I don't like other people in my head," she says. "Not that I have any experience with that."

The dragon has to admit, he himself didn't like the contact with the one from the space.

"Well, it's the best way of communication for us," reminds her Syward. "You'll get used to it."

Osith snorts sardonically and retorts, "You mean the way everyone in our family has gotten used to being used as pawns?"

Syward gasps at the audacity. Cuthbert raises his eyebrows in a shocked awe.

Osith's attitude is quite a novel experience for the dragon. Ever since he exposed himself to Syward's grandparents, he naturally commanded respect just by his size and appearance. However, Osith doesn't seem to care much about physical strength, probably because of her magical talent. Maybe he ought to give her a taste of his mental potential. When he was just an egg, his mental aura was strong enough to affect anything alive around. He wanders what it would do to her now.

Not wanting to risk any brain damage to her, he decides to take the long road and asks instead, "Have you been told about the circumstances of the incident involving me and the grandparents of Syward's namesake?"

Osith doesn't answer. Syward rehashes in his mind the official story passed down to them. It's not much different from the version which used to be told by the cultists back in the day. It seems that Syward or his children decided to omit some details.

"Sit down, please," he emits. "It's time for you to see how exactly it happened."

He's doing it for Osith's benefit but there's no reason not to include the other two as well.

He shows them everything from the moment he detected the raider scouts to the time when he left the area. He adds a little hint just for Osith that there's more to tell but he has no intention of telling her about the black dragon until she's older.

"Well, life is like a string of little accidental events," comments Cuthbert cheerfully. "It all seems like a big coincidence but if things went down differently, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it."

"The point is that what happened, happened," states Syward resolutely. "There are some consequences and we are one of them. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask us for a little help with containing the other ones."

Osith says nothing. They'll have to talk again later.

"Why don't you two tell us more about this book you seek?" emits the dragon.

Osith doesn't have to ask how does he know about that - she understands that he was listening through Syward.

"Aren't such things rather insignificant to you?" she asks instead. "Syward says that you can teach me magic."

"I have discovered a few simple spells which could be usable by a human. The power you've used on those people also seems interesting, perhaps we can work on it later. Alas, I have never found any written records of local magical knowledge. I believe it will be worth taking a look at this book."

Cuthbert gives Osith a look and when she doesn't start, he launches into the story himself.

Some time after arriving to the duchy, they heard about a high-end merchant from a distant land who was selling a book of magic. They had no way of knowing whether it was genuine but they thought that it wouldn't hurt to take a closer look. The problem was that the merchant's clientèle was several castes higher than foreign wanderers like Osith and Cuthbert - after all, the merchant was selling the book as a luxury collection item rather than something of academical value.

The merchant's ship is docked in the harbor. Getting there unnoticed is impossible - the pier is guarded and anybody trying to get there from the sea would be spotted. However, Osith and Cuthbert learned that all the outlets of the city's sewer system are leading into the harbor. So they thought, what if there's a spot close enough so we could swim underwater from there to the ship?

"And what are you going to do once you're on the ship?" asks Syward.

They haven't thought that far ahead yet but it's not a problem any longer with the dragon to navigate them. Unfortunately, he can't search the book remotely - even if it was alive, it wouldn't help him to read what's written on its pages. The more interesting question is whether they still need to go through the sewers. The dragon tells them that while it would be theoretically possible for him to get them through, it would be rather difficult and wouldn't be worth it with their way through the sewers already secured.

They can't use invisibility either. While the dragon can make them all invisible, they would became visible again after leaving his side. As for Osith learning the spell herself, that would take years at best.

On the other hand, Osith's magical trick could be very useful there. From what she tells the dragon, it's a purely neurological stun. With enough power, she can stun a grown man without as much as moving a flame of a candle burning next him.

"There's one thing we should ask ourselves," declares Syward. "Is this book worth killing somebody over it? I think not."

"Agreed," seconds the dragon. "No killing."

"Sure," acknowledges Cuthbert, as if it was obvious. "We weren't going to kill anybody, right?"

"Right," mumbles Osith.

That evening, the three humans meet the goblins as agreed. They are lead through the sewers. Syward has to admit, people who don't know it there would get lost.

At the same time, the dragon approaches the ship from the sea. He's using green-brown coloring and it's unlikely that anybody will spot him under the water at this time of day.

They arrive to a place where the way onward is barred by a grate. It's on hinges and there's no padlock but it's heavy. There are other goblins waiting for them already with ropes and pulleys. They open the way for them with much screeching.

"They must have heard it in the port," remarks Cuthbert as they pass through.

"Hardly," tells them their goblin associate and points onward with his torch.

They have reached the sea-level. The tunnel in front of them is completely submerged.

They know exactly where they are so no one thinks to ask how far is it. The goblin finds that odd but he doesn't think much of it and offers the information himself.

"Swim straight on, it's not far. When you get outside, turn right slightly and continue twice as far again. You should end up under the ship."

The swim is quite manageable for Syward and even for Cuthbert. It's a little too far for Osith but with some help, she can make it.

The boy swims first. The dragon navigates him so he can get to his destination in shortest possible time. Osith follows and Syward goes after her.

Once she clears the tunnel, the dragon offers her an edge of his wing and once she grabs on, he gives her a boost. She's a little disoriented when she surfaces and takes a gulp of air but Cuthbert pulls her to the hull readily. The ship has usual design so people on the deck wouldn't be able to see them even in daylight.

"Move to the back of the ship and await my signal," commands the dragon when Syward joins them.

There's some cabin above them. They can see light coming from little windows and they hear voices. It's probably a business meeting. The windows have heavy wooden shutters (which are open at the moment).

_"What if he's selling the book?"_ thinks Cuthbert.

The dragon repeats his question and answers, "He's not selling the book. This is about another item."

_"Do you realize what an improbable coincidence that would be, Cuthbert?"_ thinks Syward.

The dragon doesn't relay anything this time and tells them to focus.

Some time later, the meeting concludes. There's no transaction happening yet so the merchant is taking the item back to a storage. A servant cleans up, extinguishes the lights, and closes the shutters with the exception of one. This is convenient. Cuthbert would be able to open them from outside but this saves time. In the meantime, the dragon tracks the merchant.

"Cuthbert, go," he orders.

The boy climbs up the hull and slinks in. He opens another window and lowers a rope. Osith climbs up and then Syward. He's a little too big for the window but the others help him in. Once in, he turns back to the window and plans how exactly is he going to jump out of it in a hurry if things go sideways.

"I know where the book is," tells them the dragon and describes what he has seen and where all the guards and other crew members are.

"Don't go yet though," he adds. "Stay put for the moment."

They do as he says. Cuthbert and Osith get nervous after some time.

"What are we waiting for?" complains the boy. "To be discovered?"

"The dragon knows what he's doing," hushes him Syward. "Be patient."

They wait until the dragon tells them to prepare themselves - the servant is coming back to close the window. They position themselves and when the man enters, Syward grabs him in a choke from behind, Osith closes the door, and Cuthbert helps to subdue the man. When the man passes out, they tie him up and gag him.

"Now what?" whispers Osith.

The dragon considers their options and answers, "Now you wait again."

"Are you kidding me?" hisses Cuthbert.

"A fellow crew member who serves the shift with him will come looking for him," explains the dragon. "Waiting for him in ambush appears to be the safest coarse of action."

He has a point. Staying there for too long is dangerous in itself but the party isn't composed of experienced adventurers like Syward's namesake, they are just ordinary people. It's ill advised to risk exposure so playing it safe and progressing slowly is the only viable option.

Just like the dragon predicted, another guy comes looking for his mate. They subdue him just like the first one.

"Well done," tells them dragon. "Your path to the book is mostly clear, all you have to do is to follow my timing exactly. There are two guards in front of the room - that's where Osith comes in. Can you hit them the same way you did with those couriers?"

"You bet!"

In an almost mechanical way, they proceed to their goal. If they were on their own, they would surely stumble and get discovered, but thanks to the dragon's guidance, they avoid all danger.

The two guards in front of the storage room are sitting at a small table and playing cards. Obviously, they aren't standing at the sides of of the door at attention - they wouldn't be able to do that for long. After all, they are crew-members of a ship owned by a merchant - they aren't a king's guard.

"Go ahead whenever you are ready," emits the dragon.

Osith takes a breath and collects her magical power. Nodding at the guys, she steps from behind a corner and attacks with magic. It's completely silent and it affects only the two men. The one in front is knocked out right away but the one farther away is merely dazed. Syward and Cuthbert dart out immediately. Cuthbert makes sure that the first guard doesn't make noise falling down and Syward subdues the second one. It's all managed without alerting anybody.

The merchant has the key for the door and they are most certainly not going to retrieve it from him. The dragon tells Cuthbert what kind of a key it is which helps the boy to pick the lock faster.

With no time to loose, they pick the book and return to their entry point. They wrap it securely in oiled rags which should protect it from seawater for the short distance they have to swim with it. They climb down the rope and return the same way they arrived. The goblins are still there and open the grate for them.

They return to a less wet area and inspect the book. It seems undamaged. The goblin leader watches from afar. It would be hard to say what would he do if the loot was something truly valuable but as it is, the book has no value to him.

"That's it?" he asks. "Doesn't look worth it."

Osith leafs through the book. It's written in the language of the region where the dragon first discovered the undead creatures. The dragon sees everything and translates bits and pieces.

"You are correct," she says after a while. "This needs to be translated properly but I'm afraid the merchant was exaggerating. This isn't what we thought."

From what she sees, there's nothing about actual magic and spells. Only a bunch of folklore.

The goblin snorts. Chasing after worthless things - how typically human. Osith starts leafing through the rest of the book quickly.

"Wait a moment," stops her the dragon suddenly. "Go back, this seems important."

Syward and Cuthbert look over her shoulders.

"Well I'll be dammed," utters Osith.

Syward takes the book from her and shows the goblin an illustration.

"Does this look familiar?" asks Syward.

The goblin shakes his head but he has a sneaking suspicion.

"Not a very accurate drawing, I'll give you that," continues Syward. "Then again, all who met that thing and lived didn't spread the word beyond their closest."

"It's that dead thing," realizes the goblin.

"Indeed. I suggest we talk later."

The title of the section is the name given to the creatures: vampire.

The trio leaves the city and wait for the dragon who stays behind for a while. There's an alarm when the intrusion is detected but the merchant is relived that only the book is missing. He's also spooked a little. The book contains some rather obscure stuff. What if something in there is true and the thieves are somehow connected to it? All in all, the dragon doesn't have to worry much about a retribution. Moreover, it's just an ordinary merchant, not a crime lord.

The dragon examines the book next day. As suspected, there's not even a shred of magical knowledge. There's a lot of lore though. It seems to have been compiled in the time before the dragon's first big sleep, in the area of his first (indirect) encounter with vampires. Most of it are probably fairy-tales but a few accounts seem to be based on truth - like the mention of the vampires under the city.

According to the book, denizens of the city found out about what was hiding under their feet. They slew the servants and stormed the sewers. What followed was an utter massacre, no one who went down there lived to tell the tale. Any survivors fled the city which was abandoned ever since (or at least at the time of writing the book). People avoided the ruins in later times because they believed them to be haunted.

"We'll have to investigate this later," comments the dragon.

As promised, Syward and Cuthbert visit the goblins before leaving. They discuss the threat of vampires and agree that it's better to stay in touch.

Returning to the kingdom through the goblin territory would be problematic at this point so there are only two options: go around or fly. The former would take too long and the latter is complicated by the fact that the dragon can't carry them all at once - two trips would be needed.

They decide for the second option and return to the wood where the dragon's harness is stashed. The horses are donated to local farmers and the dragon starts ferrying the party over the goblin territory. He takes Syward and most of the baggage first and then returns for Osith and Cuthbert.

The family accepts the two wayward youngsters without berating them much. Cuthbert starts working for Osbert - there are always errands of the kind better left to someone with subtler talents. Osith stays with Osbert as well. She settles in Syward's and Hylda's old house and dedicates her time to studying magic. They have no real magical texts but the knowledge carried by the dragon is more than enough for the moment. Vampires seem pretty ancient though - maybe they know where such texts could be discovered.

Syward returns the sword and goes back to his wife and children. As much as he enjoyed his time with the dragon, he isn't an adventurer and doesn't like being away. That's hardly a loss - it's good to have somebody like him guarding the home front. Moreover, he can help with training the goblins for a possible encounter with vampires.

Osbert speaks with the foreman of the goblins working for him about this threat. Unfortunately, he isn't as smart as the one in the port city. Also, he doesn't represent the other goblins living in the kingdom.

While Osith starts to tackle first bits of magical knowledge shared with her, the dragon and Aylmer analyse the book. They confirm that there's nothing useful about magic. Still, it's an interesting insight into the culture of the region of its origin.

One evening finds the two sitting on a hill overlooking Osbert's estate. It's a small hill but it's probably the last time Aylmer is able to ascend it.

"You know, there's something I would like to ask," says the dragon.

"Go ahead."

"Why were you there in that hut, waiting for me? And don't tell me that it was just because of Osith."

Aylmer hesitates for a moment and then divulges, "You aren't going to like the answer. It's complicated but it can be simplified to just one word: faith."

The dragon doesn't respond. This is something he has worried about.

"You don't like blind fanaticism and people who make you into something you aren't. Neither do we but there's something you ought to understand about us humans: We need to believe in something. And those of us who know you, we believe in you. Do you think that the old Syward would go to save Hylda if it wasn't for you? Do you think our family would be so tolerant to Osith if she wasn't important to your cause?"

"I see what you mean," utters the dragon after a pause. There's no avoiding it, he needs to face the effect he has on intelligent life on this planet.

"Do you intend to stay longer this time?" asks Aylmer after a while.

"Indeed. There's too much work for me here. Before I can go to sleep again, I need to do something about the problems this part of the world faces."

Aylmer has a pretty good idea but he asks the dragon to list those problems nonetheless.

"There are three of them," answers the dragon. "The obvious one is the role of goblins in human societies. One way or another, people will have to face this question because the status quo won't hold forever."

That's nothing the king and the duke haven't been asking themselves for some time now.

"Another problem which is also obvious, albeit known only to some, are vampires," continues the dragon. "It's a disease, in truth. A disease can get out of control or change, get worse. Incinerating every last one of them is imperative. The last problem are the cultists which worship me. I've seen what worshiping of my egg alone did to a goblin tribe. Maybe these cultists are long gone, maybe they are still around. Either way, we need to learn their fate."

Aylmer nods and then starts coughing. He isn't well. It seems his old age is catching up with him.

* * *

A van arrived to a middle-sized barn. Emmet got out and opened its gate to allow Carlisle to drive in.

Bella and Edward weren't with them, they had taken another car. Their destination was about a dozen miles away. They were taking a captured drone (deprived of limbs and wrapped in tinfoil) to a small cottage there. They were quite sure that the drone's tracker is blocked by the tinfoil but it's better to be safe than sorry.

While Esme went to a small rural house standing near the barn (half of them were still human and needed somewhere to sleep), the others checked the barn. It wasn't much but it didn't leak and there was electricity - that was all they needed. There was no Internet but that was no problem for them and if they really needed to research something, they could always use an Internet café in a nearby town.

"Well, let's get started with the most important things first," announced Emmett and started unloading computers.


	8. New File

New File

The stolen drone was in a Faraday cage designed to block the drone's signal. The only connection was Bella's and Edward's own device. Having the drone only to themselves, it wasn't that difficult to take control over it after all. After being restarted, it simply accepted a new connection and an encryption key. It wasn't stored statically on the drone itself but that wouldn't be that much of a problem anyway.

The encryption wasn't even asymmetric. That would make a normal nerd face-palm but from a practical point of view, it made sense. Designers of the software assumed that every mission would launch from a base where an operator would have exclusive access to his drone.

Still, Bella had been right. Hijacking an active drone remotely wasn't a practical option. Even if they somehow obtained the encryption key used by the drone, their orders would clash with those of the operator and their interference would be detected.

With physical access to a drone, their options were somewhat broader. They could utilize the USB port for updates to install their own operating system. After all, there were Linux ports for ARM.

Edward wrote two different kinds of control software for the drones. One served the same purpose as the original one but utilized their own protocol. The other was more interesting. It made the drone it was installed on autonomous. Not in a sense that it gave the original person free will (that person was dead for all intents and purposes) but in a sense that the CPU made the drone move without any kind of orders from outside. The computing strength of the architecture didn't allow implementing any kind of a strong, real-time AI and none of them were proficient in that area beyond what they needed for their game but a drone controlled by the software could still tear anything around apart and wreak havoc. In theory, at least (it was hard to tell when tested on a limbless specimen).

Once they found out and tested everything they needed, they destroyed the drone. They wouldn't have done it if they had been still human because they wouldn't have wanted to get rid of a testing platform but human mistakes and software bugs were a thing of a past for them in their new form so it didn't matter.

Thanks to the tracking bug, they knew where the drone base was and how to fight them. All in all, they had everything they needed to strike back at their enemies and punish them for writing bad software ...and for trying to kill them. It was time to rejoin the others and finalize their plans. Perhaps they could squeeze in some brainstorming about the story of their game.

* * *

A ship arrives to the Sumerian city in the morning. The city lies in ruins. Remains of most buildings are barely noticeable and the ship can't even dock at the harbor the way it's damaged. They drop the anchor instead and lower a boat. A party of humans and goblins led by Osith and Cuthbert disembarks.

"There's nothing alive here," emits the dragon from above. "There aren't any vampires on the surface either. I haven't probed the sewers yet - it would alert anything down there to our presence."

The sewer outlet is collapsed, so is the entrance used to deliver slaves. However, the dragon is quite sure that those two weren't the only two means to access the sewers. With his help, the party finds a shaft covered by a stone slab and concealed. There's no ladder or any other means of descending but that's hardly a surprise. The dragon still remembers how aptly the vampire climbed the ceiling of the cave when it attacked the old Syward.

Most of the party descends and finds out that the sewer is a sewer in name only because it's all dry and parched nowadays. They progress with great caution and as they do, the dragon expands the area he covers with his senses. After all, if there's anything to be disturbed by his probing, it would be disturbed by the searchers just as well.

It's just before noon when they find a marble coffin. The dragon chances a peek inside and confirms that it's occupied. The men attempt to shift the lid to no avail. Cuthbert finds out that there's some kind of an internal mechanism which allows only the occupant to open the coffin from inside. There's an inlet in the coffin allowing for liquid to be poured in. The architects of the device had blood in mind probably but Cuthbert reckons concentrated acid would do just as well - if destruction of the contents was their goal. As it is, they need the creature inside alive (or rather not destroyed).

Osith can provide an alternate means of opening the coffin. While auxiliaries make a tent above the shaft, she reaches with her magic and triggers the mechanism. The lid moves a little and stops. They don't know if it's supposed to open fully and is malfunctioning or whether they or the occupant are supposed to push it the rest of the way but they aren't waiting to find out. They attach ropes to the lid as best as they can. The goblins pull while the men stand prepared with pitchforks and torches.

The revealed creature is every bit as horrid and disgusting as the other one but far thinner and withered. It looks like it has been hibernating for some time. It's awake but feeble. The men have no trouble pinning the monstrosity down with their weapons. It trashes around and screeches to no avail. The goblins move forward with short cutlasses and cleavers and deprive the creature of arms and legs.

While the goblins carry the captive back to the shaft, the humans look around some more quickly. There don't seem to be any other coffins in vicinity.

The vampire and its limbs are raised to the surface, into the tent raised above the shaft. Osith tries to address it, already suspecting the futility of doing so. The creature doesn't even attempt to understand her so she orders a goblin to throw the limbs out of the tent. The flesh sizzles and withers in sunlight. It's like rapid drying. The vampire can't see that from its position but it can somehow sense it. It screeches in rage.

Even then it's still clear that they won't get any information by asking. Osith and Cuthbert nod at the commander of humans and the foreman of the goblins. Both of them know what that means and who's about to interrogate the creature. They command everybody to return to the dock. The goblins are reminded to wash their hands carefully in seawater. The goblin foreman is asked to stay behind though.

Cuthbert opens the side of the tent facing away from the sun and the dragon approaches. Armed with the knowledge gained by examining the other specimen, he looks into the creature's mind. It's an unpleasant experience comparable to wading in a sewer full of rotting corpses.

"Finish it," the dragon commands Osith who relays the order to the goblin who drags the creature into sunlight. Just to be sure, they make a fire and burn all that remains.

"There's a hidden room down there," reveals the dragon and shows Cuthbert where it is.

"Let's take a look," responds Cuthbert.

He asks one of the men to accompany him and descends down the shaft once more. They find the secret chamber and open it. Inside, they find two things of interest. One is a magical text - a real one this time. It's written using ordinary ink which suggests human origin. It contains an introduction into an area of magic which can be used to influence minds of sentient beings. It's not much and may even seem a little redundant for the dragon but it saves him centuries of trial and error. He's sure that he can fashion a useful spell for Osith on such basis.

The question is how has such a text found its way into possession of the vampires. The dragon hasn't seen any of them using magic but he has seen only two so far. Perhaps one of them dabbled in magic during its human life and hoped to perfect the skill after it? That would explain why is it a human book. It also has to be admitted that the first vampire they destroyed exercised quite a remarkable level of control over the goblin tribes.

The other find is utterly mundane but no less important. It's some sort of a record or notes left by other creatures. Perhaps another word to describe it is a "visiting book". It doesn't contain any account of the uprising and the following events, just like the notes found by the old Syward. Unlike those, it's not written using blood but by tactile letters stamped into the material.

One of the entries was left by a vampire who had discovered a peculiar community of people in a land further to the south. They were utterly closed and segregated. According to the vampire, the structure of their micro-society and the nature of their religion made them suitable for being taken over to be used as cattle or thralls. The vampire left rough directions to get there and invited up to two others to join this venture.

The interesting part is that this sect worshiped a legendary fire-breathing, winged creature as their god. The probability that this group is anybody else than descendants of the self-exiled villagers is minuscule.

They look at later entries and learn that two vampires have stopped by and claimed the spots. Luckily, the second one didn't think to destroy the directions. It seems it's not their way to be that self-serving.

There are no exact time specifications but they estimate that these things were happening sometime around the time of the old Syward.

"Well, what a coincidence," drawls Cuthbert.

"Not quite," disagrees the dragon. "We knew that the cultists were heading in this direction. These creatures prey on vulnerable communities like this one. It was only a matter of time before the two met."

"What are we going to do?" asks Osith.

"We shall go there," decides the dragon.

"Now? Shouldn't we report back?"

"We've come prepared to confront vampires and we'll do just that. The ship is going to depart immediately but you two are staying with me. Osith and me are going to study the magical book, we need to know what tricks they might have. When we are done, I'll fly with you to our destination. We'll get there long before the ship so we can use the time to scout the region and gather information."

It's done as he said. He and Osith spend next few days working through the content of the book. Cuthbert combs the area in the meantime but doesn't find anything relevant.

"I was wondering," remarks Osith when she's taking a break. "These cultists are a closed society and there aren't that many of them. How can they possibly maintain a healthy population for centuries?"

"I doubt that the vampires would let their cattle degrade too much. The same can be assumed about whatever priests they have."

"True, but what can they do without exposing the sect to the outside? They can accept occasional vagrants and refugees who have nowhere to go but if they live in a remote location, there won't be many of such stray sheep at hand."

"Yes, we can assume that they won't be very healthy," admits the dragon.

"And what exactly are we going to do with them anyway? I mean after we destroy those three things. Reveal your existence to them and tell them the truth? I dare say that it would be frowned upon by... you know, the other one."

Osith says the last bit in a low voice. Her old voice returns to narrate.

**"Oh yes, he had told me about the black dragon from outer space. At that time, I was still struggling to comprehend the idea so I had not discussed it with our dragon. And yet, various questions were gnawing at my mind already. What were those other dragons intending to do with our world? How were they going to react should our dragon break their rules of discretion again?" **

"We'll see when we learn more," responds the dragon, concluding the matter for the moment. He understands her concerns but he believes that worrying too much about the other dragons won't get them far.

When they are done, Osith and Cuthbert pack their things and strap themselves into the dragon's harness. They catch up with the ship and seeing that everything is alright, they continue to their destination without stopping.

They arrive to the region. It's a little less arid than the previous one. There aren't any trees but there's enough humidity to support grass. However, a nearby mountain range creates a rain shadow and there's a desert on their other side.

After a few days of searching, the dragon finds barely noticeable remnants of a village. There aren't any noticeable traces of any dwellings but they manage to find a hint of a ruin of the main building. They assume that it served both as a town hall and a temple - just like in the village of old Syward's grandparents. They find a graveyard next to the village. On the surface, it's a cracked tombstone here and there but the dragon can detect fragments of bones underneath.

To be safe, they gather all the remaining clues and the dragon reconstructs the village. It's confirmed, the cultists used to live here. Their religion was as strong as ever, only more formal and rigid. The dragon was considered as something transcendent rather than a being of flesh and bones.

There is no noticeable influence of vampires. Moreover, none of the buried remains bear any hint of the aura left on bodies drained by one of those creatures. It's safe to assume that they kept a low profile at this point. Moreover, they estimate that the village was abandoned by the time the third vampire arrived.

"What now?" asks Cuthbert.

"We'll find them," answers the dragon. "There's still plenty of time before the ship arrives."

"They could be all dead for all we know," remarks Osith.

"They could be," admits the dragon.

The two humans remain behind while the dragon engages his invisibility and continues the search. The big question is, was this a random migration, did they flee from something (e.g. the three vampires), or did the vampires manipulate them into migrating to segregate them even more? The dragon decides to base his search on the assuming the last.

He climbs high and takes a look at the land bellow him. If he was three sinister vampires manipulating a gullible herd of humans, where would he take them? Those mountains between the grassland and dessert, they catch his attention.

The dragon flies over them and inspects them in detail. From his vantage point, he detects three anomalies. He starts examining them one by one but he keeps his distance and inspects only visually to be safe. There are three vampires somewhere around. What if one of them has an ability to somehow detect him even when he doesn't probe actively?

First anomaly is a ruin of an ancient city carved in a mountain. He estimates that it's older than the village. There doesn't seem to be anything of interest there.

Second one is another rock-cut city - or rather town. It's quite far away from the other one and its position seems to have been chosen with concealment in mind. There are people living there. The place isn't exactly bustling with activity though.

The strange thing is that the dragon can't find any fields anywhere nearby. The settlement is on the side of the mountain range facing the desert but he would expect some farms on the other side supplying the town. It seems that somebody wanted to keep the people truly cloistered. The question is, what do those people eat?

For the time being, the dragon doesn't attempt to get a passive read on the site (or gets any closer for that matter). It might be overcautious but the dragon doesn't wish to risk it for now.

To be thorough, he checks the third site as well. It's an abandoned bandit lair and there's nothing of interest.

"We have to assume that those three vampires will be near the settlement, possibly under it," states Osith when the dragon returns. "That means you shouldn't go closer for now, let alone use active probing."

"But me and Osith smell like all the other humans there," suggests Cuthbert. "We can sneak in and find out what's going on there."

"It's a closed community," objects Osith. "They'll recognize you as an intruder. However, I can go in there invisible."

"I'm taking you both to the coast where you'll wait for the ship," decides the dragon resolutely. "These people were there for many years, they can wait for a little longer. Rushing in without a backup would be unwise. In the meantime, I can continue observing from afar."

"What?" whines Cuthbert.

Osith has similar feelings on the matter but she understands the dragon's logic. Going in and finding out more before the ship arrives seems like a natural thing to do but there's very little reason to do that from a rational point of view.

They do as the dragon said. Once they find source of fresh water and the two humans make a camp, the dragon returns to observe the mountain. There are almost no goings or comings apart from regular patrols. This once again raises the question of what do those people eat.

He's starting to think that his observation is in vain when he spots people gathering on a courtyard carved in the top of the mountain. Its walls are high and shield it completely from outside - the dragon can see it all only because he's watching from far above. A pyre is prepared and a body is laid on it and burned. All in all, it looks like a burial ceremony. It's a little bit too ceremonial but that's not out of place among such people. What's more peculiar is how well the body burns. Maybe it has been dried up prior to burning?

The rest of the dragon's plan goes in the exact boring way he wanted it to go. Osith and Cuthbert rendezvous with the ship and sail further along the coast. Once they find a safe place to drop anchor, they leave the ship with a skeleton crew and travel to the bandit lair. The dragon meets with Osith and Cuthbert and shares with them what he has learned.

"Are you sure it was a burial and not a sacrifice?" asks Cuthbert. "You know, to a dragon god of fire?"

"The body was dead," replies the dragon. "I don't know how the person had died or how old he was for that matter."

"If the vampires are truly there, then maybe it's a cover," muses Osith. "Maybe they sucked him dry before the priests burned him as an offering to you."

They consider their plan to go in the city. Cuthbert proposes to infiltrate it himself posing as refugee. Osith and the dragon take turns shooting the idea and his arguments down. The cultists were moved there by the vampires to cut them off from any contact. Due to the location of the settlement, it's unlikely that anybody would find any story spun by Cuthbert believable.

The only viable way to get a closer look is to utilize invisibility. In the past, that would pose problems of its own: Osith can make invisible only herself and the dragon wouldn't be able to communicate with her. Fortunately, Osith and the dragon have learned to cast spells together prior to embarking on the expedition. If they cast the invisibility jointly, Cuthbert will remain invisible for as long as he's with Osith and all three of them will be able to communicate. Of course, should Cuthbert become visible, Osith won't be able to bring him back under her invisibility. Should either Osith or the dragon become visible, they won't be able to communicate after becoming invisible again (but, as always, the dragon can listen to her when she's visible even when he himself is invisible).

Osith and Cuthbert reach the cultist settlement and explore the area in greater detail than the dragon could. The first thing they notice is that the town is completely enclosed - nothing goes in or out. There are untraversable rocks all around and the only two access routes are bared by heavy gates. They don't see any guards outside but they bet that there are some inside. Cuthbert could climb over if he was alone but he can't leave Osith's side and they can't climb while holding hands. There's no visible way to open a gate from outside either and even if there was was, interacting with the gate would break the invisibility.

"Wait it up," tells them the dragon. "They'll send out a patrol soon enough."

"Hopefully," remarks Cuthbert in his head. They do have a supply of water and some food but not for an unlimited time.

Just as the dragon predicted, one of the gates open and two men armed with spears emerge. The gate closes again right away.

"Get on their tail," says the dragon. "Try to eavesdrop on them during their patrol and sneak in behind them when they return."

Eavesdropping yields next to nothing. Both men are very guarded with what they say, almost as if they were afraid of being ratted out by the other one. Hence, the only useful information they gain is that both men exhibit signs of inbreeding.

They infiltrate the settlement. It's all they expected it to be: dwellings carved in stone, statues and reliefs of the dragon all around, quiet people going about their everyday tasks. The whole place is designed like a prison so it's as difficult to get out as it is to get in. The language is similar enough to their own and they can understand it despite many differences. Osith and Cuthbert start gathering any information they can without taking any risks and the dragon pieces them together.

One of the first things they find out is that the settlement used to house more people - the population is dying out. The gene pool is also beyond the edge of sustainability. Everybody is related to everybody. Because of this, it's forbidden to have unauthorized relationships with other people. All marriages are arranged by a group of priests based on genealogical records. The dragon wagers that vampires oversee the work of these genealogists.

The mystery of food supply is also revealed. There's an underground spring which not only provides the tribe with drinking water but also supplies growth farms in the town. Plant production is supplemented by a limited amount of poultry. Neither si large enough to support the population and especially poultry seems like something reserved only for certain people. Then they discover that there are additional farms underground which grow mushrooms. At the same time (and at the same place), they find out about another (and probably the last) part of their food production: bugs. Cuthbert finds that particularly revolting. Sure, they seem like a special kind suitable for eating but it doesn't change much for him. There's also the detail that those bugs are meant for lower class people.

The society of cultists does have classes, of course. On the very top are priests with a high priest as their head. They are followed by a class which serves as their muscle and functions both as law enforcement and a military. There has never been a need for military as far as the dragon and his agents can tell but they do patrol and they have brought new tribe members in the past. Mostly people without a people to call their own who would perish in the wasteland around otherwise.

At the bottom are ordinary people. Some are more important, some less, depending on their occupation and skills. As with everybody else, they are hard to read and they don't give away much. There's no direct confirmation yet but it seems like people are afraid of informers. They aren't happy - that much can be said for sure. Given enough time, careful observation of individuals could reveal who believes in the regime for the sake of believing in something, who does not but has no hope left to even want to do anything, and who disagrees with the regime and sees that the tribe is in a dead end. Of course, the dragon's abilities could help in this but not without the vampires finding out about his presence.

Even with the invisibility (or rather because of, since they can't even open a door for themselves), Osith and Cuthbert can't freely access the sacrificial courtyard on the top of the mountain and there aren't any new "sacrificial burials". It's also difficult to learn more about the priest caste because they don't reveal much in public. It goes without saying that they don't learn anything about vampires - obviously, ordinary denizens of the settlement know nothing about those.

With all the general intelligence already found by the two agents, they have two options left. One is to keep lying low and hoping to stumble on a special information. The problem with such a plan is that it would take time and they can't replenish their water supply - even such a simple interaction with the outside world would break the invisibility ward. The other is to take a closer approach and risk getting caught.

"You know," addresses them the dragon. "If you are uncomfortable down there, we can leave and return in a few years armed with some kind of a charm spell."

"And use it to do what?" responds Osith. "Make the people here rebel against the priests?"

"You know, we should at least confirm that those three bloodsuckers are here," suggests Cuthbert. "And I think that the way to them leads through the priests."

"The question is, do we want to risk you getting caught?" ponders the dragon. "I think not. Surely not at this point. Besides, you won't get far without breaking the invisibility. We need an inside help."

It's true. Slipping in our out through a big open gate is one thing. Using a narrow door along with another person who opens the said door just for himself and closes them again is impossible.

"Who?" exclaims Cuthbert. "And how are we supposed to contact anybody without exposing ourselves?"

"We do it outside," realizes Osith.

"Quite," confirms the dragon. "Keep an eye on the guards going on patrols - we are going to nab one of them. It would be best if two malcontents found themselves on the same patrol but one will suffice if necessary."

It takes all their time (or rather supplies) left to determine the best candidates. Some of them are merely doubting the priests, a few seem to harbour resentment, all are loyal enough on the outside to be allowed to remain on the force. With a patrol consisting of two men, this provides some interesting combinations.

Osith's and Cuthbert's water supply is exhausted but there's little reason to dilly dally anyway. Next patrol doesn't contain any of their candidates so they just use the opportunity to leave. Now that they have gathered the necessary information, they can stake out outside the city.

"If we wait till there are two skeptics on a patrol, we can avoid any killing," states Cuthbert once their supplies are replenished.

"And if it's a loyal one and with a rebellious one, we can kill the loyal one and talk just with the rebel," argues Osith. "That way, he will know that there's nobody to rat him out."

"That way, he will have to explain where's his buddy when he returns."

"We'll take whichever comes first," decides the dragon. "The supply of fresh water on the ship isn't unlimited and we don't want to waste our time with foraging."

As it happens, the case preferred by Osith comes first (after a few patrols without any of their candidates present) - a fanatical cultist accompanied by a man named Leofric (while the cultists have picked a few foreign names during their travels, most of them still use the same names as their great-great-great-great-great-grandparents). Leofric doesn't seem to believe in the dragon or the teachings of the priests but he's also fearful of their power. They prepare an ambush quickly.

The two men bump into Osith who is waiting for them in their path. She raises her hands in a peaceful gesture.

"I'm a friend," she tells them, using their dialect.

Leofric is wary and his comrade raises his spear. Osith quickly tells them where she comes from and who her ancestors are.

"Heretic!" roars the loyal man and charges. It seems he doesn't care whether is Osith telling the truth - it would be all the same to him anyway.

He doesn't get far, Cuthbert fells him by a well-aimed bolt from a crossbow. Leofric catches his body before it can fall and uses it as a shield, propping it with one hand and raising his spear with the other.

"I'm sorry about that," says Osith, not being sorry at all. "Was he your friend?"

That's most definitely not the case, at least according to their research. Leofric doesn't answer though and looks around wildly instead, trying to spot Cuthbert.

"Could you please try not to get any of his blood on you?" continues Osith. "Trust me, you don't want to let that happen."

Leofric demands Cuthbert to reveal himself and he does so.

"Why did your comrade attack me?" asks Osith. "Aren't you supposed to respect my ancestors?"

Reluctantly, Leofric explains that grandparents of Syward (senior) are largely considered fictive characters. Their place in their mythology is that of fallen saints who were blessed with divine favor and then abandoned their god when the going got tough.

"That's nonsense!" exclaims Cuthbert. "The priests and their flock were the ones who ran away while our ancestors persevered!"

"We aren't here to discuss religion," emphasizes Osith. "Your community is in danger. Perhaps we should start from the beginning."

Leofric nods and drops the dead body. Osith and Cuthbert introduce themselves and tell him everything with the exception of the dragon. He's a little disconcerted by the fact that they know his name and have been observing him.

On the other hand, learning that there are three vampires hiding under the mountain doesn't surprise him as much as it should - just as Cuthbert and Osith predicted. If anything, it all starts to make sense to him. He knew the last incinerated man. He was old but not enough to die yet. At the time, he merely thought that priests convinced the old man to accept an early death to conserve resources (which in itself would be hypocritical - some of the priests are very old). His body also looked weird - drained of all blood.

In the end, Leofric agrees to help them without the dragon having to show up. Returning without his comrade poses a problem though - how is he going to explain his absence?

"What if he decided to become a missionary?" suggests Cuthbert. "You know, let's say that he stumbled while patrolling and hit his head. And when he was getting up, he started to stare straight into the sun and then told you that the god of fire told him to go spread your faith somewhere else."

"Do you really think that's going to work?" replies Osith sarcastically.

"The priests are going to interrogate me thoroughly," alleges Leofric.

"And we'll be right behind you every step of the way," insists Cuthbert.

"With no power to do anything without revealing ourselves," contends Osith with the same sarcastic tone as before. "Not even to let you know that we are there."

"No one has ever said that catching vampires is easy," utters Cuthbert.

"Do I understand correctly that goblins are the only ones who can confront these vampires without a risk?" asks Leofric.

"You mean other than a risk of getting torn to pieces?" retorts Osith. "Yes, that's correct."

"My people remember them only in myth and only as enemies who had part in running us out of our homeland."

"Your friends won't react react well to seeing them," observes Cuthbert.

Leofric nods.

"Then we'd better avoid involving them."

Because they haven't said anything about the dragon, they need a cover story for their limitations regarding the invisibility spell. They tell Leofric that getting two people invisible at the same time is very difficult, needs special equipment, and can't be done near the vampires anyway because they would feel it. Another problem is how is Leofric going to know that Osith and Cuthbert are ready and following him.

The dragon sends the commander of their human force to stay with Leofric. He sends him a signal just before they enter the invisibility again. The commander waits for a sufficient time and then announces that Osith and Cuthbert are back. Afterwards, he and a few of his men move the body further away from the settlement and wait.

As they travel back to the settlement, Leofric thinks that he can hear something sometimes. It's nothing concrete, just sounds which could be echoes of the noise created by himself. Other times he turns around and sees a loosened stone rolling down a slope. The uncertainness makes him uneasy. Then again, he has no plans of taking any risks on their behalf nor have they asked him to.

The reaction of Leofric's superiors is just as they have expected. They question him thoroughly, then he's passed to their superiors, and then to priests. For the whole time, Leofric makes sure that his invisible friends can follow. They don't always make it inside the room where he's debriefed but they always at least listen outside and they don't loose track of him.

The peculiar thing is that in a normal army, Leofric's immediate superiors would send a search party after the defector. Not here - every layer of the command structure defers the decision to those higher so no party is sent for the time being.

In the end, they end up in front of the high priest himself. Leofric is quaking in his boots because people like him don't meet with the high priest like that - ever. Osith and Cuthbert aren't very surprised though. What happened (both allegedly and for real) is unprecedented from what they know so it's only logical that the highest man himself gets involved.

During the interrogation, they notice two important things about the high priest. One is that he doesn't actually believe in the dragon. That leaves him with three probable explanations: Leofric's companion went crazy from the lies they themselves have fed him, he deserted and made his reasons for leaving up to cover the tracks, or Leofric is lying.

The other thing they notice is that he's afraid of something - something more powerful than he is. Whatever it is, the missing guardsman is a big problem for him. Maybe the vampires don't like their cattle running away? Maybe they don't want the deserter to attract attention in the outside world?

When asked whether a search party should be sent, the high priest declines. The other top-tier priests aren't surprised which tells them that they know about the vampires. Maybe they intend to leave the hunting of the fugitive down to them? The high priest also forbids any more patrols and puts the city in lock-down.

Leofric is detained and locked up in a free room meant for a priest. They can't put him in a prison cell because they don't have an actual prison. Besides, they don't really know what happened out there so they want to keep their options open. All in all, Leofric is treated much better than he expected.

"What now?" asks Cuthbert. "Shall we bust him out?"

"We need to go after the high priest!" insists Osith.

"Neither," states the dragon. "Get out of there."

"What?!" exclaims Cuthbert, thinking that the dragon is aborting the mission.

"Do as I say. I have an idea."

Time is of the essence so there's no time for discussion.

One of the gates has a rampart accessible only by ladders but the other has narrow stairs. The choose that one as their escape route and climb down using a rope folded in half. They could jump as well but Osith would break her leg probably. They leave without leaving any trace other than their scent.

"Care to explain?" asks Cuthbert on their way back to the place where they ambushed the patrol.

"The high priest will report to the vampires and when he does, one of them will go after the deserter."

"I see where are you going with this," remarks Osith.

They go out of their invisibility and rendezvous with their henchmen. They drag the corpse away, creating a trail to lure the vampire in. They hope that the creature won't notice that the quarry is dead already.

Some time after sunset, the dragon spots a vampire following the trail. It's alone even though it must know that there's multiple people in front of it. That's no surprise. The creature is safe in its supposed position of an apex predator and its greed hasn't allowed it to ask the others for help.

The dragon catches the vampire out in the open. It can hear the swishing of big wings but it has no prior knowledge to connect the sound with. All the advantages are on the dragon's side in this situation, it's like an eagle dropping down on a hare.

The dragon signals the others and deprives the vampire of limbs before reading its mind. Just as they suspected, the vampires live in caverns beneath the settlement. The dragon finds out that there's a way to get in and out other than through the settlement. It's this exit that the captured vampire has used.

The goblin foreman chops the vampire's (still "living") head off and puts it on a stick, fashioning a gruesome scepter just like the goblin chief in the time of the old Syward. The other goblins don't know how the creature was defeated but they are excited even more than the last time. They burn the limbs and torso.

"What now?" asks Cuthbert, suspecting the answer already.

"Now we finish it," states the dragon. "It's time to capitalize."

They make their way to the exit from the caverns. Cuthbert and a few men carry heavy blankets and skins of water. Beside the goblin foreman, only two other goblins accompany them.

It has to be admitted, the entrance is utterly invisible from air. They would have needed to comb the whole mountain to find it - not something the dragon was willing to order because of the danger of betraying their presence either to vampires or to human patrols.

The dragon shows Cuthbert (in his mind) a map of the caves and points out a place where the vampires reside.

"I need you to lure them closer to this exit," he says. "It will be dangerous, especially if something goes wrong."

He points out another spot and continues, "You need to get here afterwards and hide under wet blankets."

"Understood," answers Cuthbert, knowing perfectly well what's the dragon planning to do. "However, the city's underground is connected to these caverns. Isn't there a danger that this might damage their food production? And what if it causes a cave-in in the path to their source of water?"

"Well, at least we'll have easier time getting them to move out of here," observes Osith.

Offering no further argument, Cuthbert leads the men assigned to him into the depths of the cave system. They stop at their final destination first where they douse the blankets in water and leave them there. The men's morale is good enough so they don't question Cuthbert's orders but they suspect that fire will be involved - and rightly so. What they are wrong about is their assumption that this fire will be somehow cooked up by Osith herself and that Cuthbert doesn't wish for her power to be widely known.

Outside, only Osith and the two others in the know remain by the entrance. Everybody else is either waiting nearby, back in the bandit lair, or back on the ship. The dragon lands nearby as softly as possible but doesn't go to the entrance yet. He smells the trail of the caught vampire but not the others. It's possible that this was the first time any of them crawled out in a very long time.

Cuthbert and his companions progress through the caverns. So far, there's no sign of anything. There's no need to search every crevice for possible alternate routes for vampires, the dragon has learned the entire layout already. They just need to make sure that nothing gets behind them.

"Can you sense anything?" he asks.

The dragon concludes that since he's in range anyway, he could try to open his passive senses as well. He does so but he doesn't feel anything alive. He informs Cuthbert.

"Pity, I hoped to catch the high priest colluding with the vampires," the lad comments.

"His time will come," states Osith. "Focus on the mission."

Assured that the two vampires aren't anywhere near the entrance, the dragon tiptoes closer to it. Cuthbert doesn't like the quietness. They are almost at the place where the vampires are supposed to be but there's still no sign of them. He tells his companions to hang some distance behind him and start running back when he starts. He goes ahead with a lantern in one hand and a crossbow in the other.

"That's far enough," tells him the dragon not long afterwards. "There's no point in letting you get lured in any further. Stop and keep your eyes peeled."

If Cuthbert wasn't expecting it, he would miss it. A vampire tries to sneak behind their backs using the ceiling. Cuthbert shoots it and starts running. The vampire drops to the floor and snarls in rage but before it gets up, the other one runs past it and pursues the intruders.

Cuthbert catches up with one of his men, grabs his crossbow and, guided by the dragon, shoots over his shoulder. The second vampire snarls as the bolt nicks him. The first one catches up with him. The dragon estimates that the whole thing bought Cuthbert and his men slightly more time than it cost.

It's clear that the group isn't going to make it in time. The vampires are close enough so the dragon does the only thing he can besides using his flame - he unfolds his aura and covers the caverns by active probing. Cuthbert yells at the men to keep running but if they felt it, they had no time to ponder over it. The vampires feel it immediately and react just as the dragon hoped - they stop their pursuit and stand in confusion, trying to ascertain the nature of what they can sense.

"Now or never," declares the dragon, sticks his mouth in the entrance, and starts breathing fire.

Cuthbert and his men make it back to the wet blankets just in time and hide under them. The vampires try to run but the flame is faster. It reaches and scorches them. The dragon cuts off immediately. The vampires aren't destroyed yet but he doesn't wish to risk the lives of the men inside. The flame caused some tremors but he's confident that there won't by any cave-ins.

"Osith, take everybody and finish it," orders the dragon. "Cuthbert, you are with me."

He makes himself invisible and gets out of the way. Osith relays the order to her companions. The goblin calls his two kinsmen and they take the point, running to the vampires. Osith and the others follow right behind them.

Cuthbert and the men with him rendezvous with Osith. He returns outside alone where he climbs on the dragon's back and they take off.

The goblins reach the badly burned monsters and make short work of them. They take the heads and, not having enough time, pour oil on the rest and let it burn.

The dragon doesn't use active probing on the settlement but his passive sense are enough. There's panic in there. The tremors were felt by the people and no one knows what they were.

"I'll drop you at the sacrificial courtyard," says the dragon to Cuthbert. "You should be able to make your way to Leofric from there."

Osith's group encounters a few shaken people, all of them lower class. One of them seems to suffer from results of breathing in some of the hot air and smoke, he was probably at the edge of the afflicted area. She tells them not to be afraid and explains that the blast was necessary to destroy abominations living under their feet. She points at the heads as a proof. The people are too shocked to doubt her claim, ask questions, or even hinder her.

The dragon drops Cuthbert off. The lad doesn't have the advantage of invisibility this time around but in the chaos all around and with the guidance from the dragon (who has no need to keep his distance now), he easily reaches Leofric and frees him. He informs him about the demise of the vampires and tells him that Osith is bringing their heads in as a proof. Leofric is surprised a little by the swiftness of events but he's prepared to aid.

Cuthbert gives Leofric a list of other like-minded guards and asks him to contact them. He warns him that Osith's magical power is not to be revealed. They part ways and the dragon guides Cuthbert to assassinate a few lower ranking officers.

By that time, Osith and the others emerge from the underground. No one thought that people were actually coming through there (especially with the higher priest knowing about the vampires) so there's no defense prepared on that side. No one in the settlement has ever seen a goblin but they recognize them for what they are. However, it's obvious that they are working for the humans and, of course, the twitching heads they carry draw far more attention than themselves.

The priests and high officers attempt to scramble some defenses but the chain of command is damaged and part of the force either doesn't show up or sides with Leofric. The dragon considers contacting the high priest and ordering him to stand down but decides against it in the end. The high priest is an intelligent man and wouldn't bow to a phantom voice in his head so all that the dragon would achieve would be revealing himself. He has to trust Osith and Leofric to handle the situation.

Osith talks to people, explaining about the vampires under the city and the collaboration of the priests with them. Lower priests, who had no knowledge of this, refute this vehemently but the heads are right there in front of them. Just like with Leofric, a lot of things start to make sense suddenly for ordinary people. It doesn't seem like there's going to be any fight.

Osith tells the people where they come from and how does the home look like nowadays. Then she suggests that more vampires might come after them and tells the crowd that they will help anyone who wishes to leave the place.

"That's a decision we have to make as a community!" someone cries out.

The person is right - if enough people leave, the rest won't be able to survive. However, Osith won't admit that.

"The hell it is!" she snaps. "Anybody who wishes to leave can make that decision for himself. And we'll be here to help with the repatriation."

In the end, the entire low caste and half of the guards decide to take their offer. They use the rest of the night to pack and leave at the sunrise. There are golden ornaments in the religious areas but they don't dare to loot those. They head to the site of their old village in the grassland.

The ship relocates so it's closer to the village. There are no usable ruins there so the crew of the ship has to lend them materials to make some tents. The dragon locates an underground stream and they dig a well. Then he seeks out some game and guides a hunting party to it.

Things are more interesting back in the mountains. Some of the priests who had no knowledge of the vampires defect and conspire with the remaining guards. They slaughter the entire priest class and burn the high priest on his own "sacrificial" pyre. Afterwards, they collect anything of value and leave next day just like the others. They don't head to Osith's camp though but opt to travel further inland along the base of the mountain range to nearest civilization.

The dragon considers doing something about them but then he decides to let them go. While they do know about vampires, he doesn't think that they will be much of a problem. Even if one or more of them were captured by the creatures and questioned (something the dragon doesn't believe the vampires to be capable of), the kingdom is quite far away and the rogue cultists don't know how to get there.

With the situation more or less stable, the dragon flies back to the kingdom to talk with Osbert and other elders. At the same time, a dozen families board the ship and start a voyage there as well.

Osbert is impressed by the four slain vampires, pleased that no one was hurt, and surprised that they managed to find the cultists on the same trip. He's more worried about that many people coming home though. While their numbers aren't significant compared to all the people and goblins living in the kingdom already, their arrival can't be hidden from the nobility and ultimately, the king's permission is needed for so many immigrants arriving from nowhere. He can try to secure it but he knows that the first thing the authorities are going to ask is where he intends to settle them. There are no free houses in any of the cities and even if there were, how would that many people find employment? And if a new settlement was to be founded for them, on whose lands would that be? There are no free areas left in the kingdom - every inch of the land belongs to somebody. Moreover, they want to keep the community together. On the other hand, all of them are related to each other so dumping them on a deserted island won't work.

"There is a piece of land which doesn't belong to anybody," suggests the dragon and accompanies his words by an image of the place where he slumbered.

"Who would want to live there?" argues Osbert.

"Somebody who is used to much harsher conditions."

"There are different kinds of harsh."

However, it's the best possible solution. Osbert approaches an associate from the court and explains their problem. They talk about the issue and then approach the king with a proposal. They offer to claim the no-one's land in the name of the crown and create a colony for certain unsavory characters there. The kingdom, just like any other sufficiently advanced and populous country, contains a certain amount of people who represent a nuisance for the society - petty criminals, vagrants, orphans without home, and so on. Any kind of action from the crown would be costly so the authorities merely keep an eye on such people and make sure they don't cross a certain line. However, this idea for a new home for them sponsored by Osbert's family intrigues the king. After all, sending somebody there wouldn't even be an exile and taxpaying subjects will welcome clean streets. He gives his permission and a charter is drawn codifying the status of the colony. Osbert also asks for a permission for a passage of goblin workers there which is actually a bigger problem to swallow.

I takes a long time but eventually, all (former) cultists are shipped back to their homeland. Many of them complain about the cold and the rest don't like playing wardens to all the misfits of the kingdom but it's still an improvement.

The filling of the unclaimed land is a point of tension between all nations neighboring the area. Moreover, the king of the kingdom isn't getting any younger and Osbert wonders how is the king's son going to deal with the challenge of bearing his father's crown. The king isn't a perfect ruler by any means but at least he knows how difficult it was to get on his throne. The same can't be said about the son and even less about his little grandson.

Fortunately, the magical text that Cuthbert has found at the beginning of their expedition can be of use to them in this matter. For Osith, it means merely a few convenient spells which she can use in the field to manipulate enemies. However, the dragon can combine this new area of magic with his own natural abilities. After several years of research, he starts influencing dreams of the king's grandson and the boy's counterparts in neighboring lands. With a bit of luck, a conflict between them can be averted but it's also a delicate matter which can easily backfire. Yes, he could turn them all into pacifists if he wanted. However, would their fathers ever bequeath their crowns to such weaklings? And what would happen if an external threat invaded the region?

They keep hunting vampires, of course, but they never encounter more than one of them ever again. Osith spearheads first few expeditions but then she settles to follow academical pursuits. She marries as well, mostly to pass on her magic. Her children prove that genetics do play a role in having a magical talent. The dragon teaches them himself but when a third generation of wizards come, Osith has reached sufficient level of mastery to take over.

The relations with the wild goblins are on a good path but the dragon fears that they will loose their way of life if the need for a natural barrier between the kingdom and the duchy ever vanishes.

The dragon and his blooming organization starts thinking about his next big sleep as well. The humans propose an interesting idea: why not turn his last place of rest into a proper lair? With the civilization expanding in all directions, it's increasingly difficult to find a natural place big enough and hidden enough at the same time. The dragon agrees.

Just like the old Syward, Osith has an extraordinarily long life. When she begins to feel her age, she and the dragon agree to part ways. He seals himself in a vault prepared for him and goes to sleep.

Osith's narration returns one last time.

**"And that was it. While the dragon's journey has barely began, I myself am done and good with this adventure. I'm going to enjoy some well deserved rest in what few years I have left. Looking back at the eventful and productive life I had and at the small crowd of my descendants, I can't but feel huge gratefulness to my master. I know that he doesn't wish to be considered a god but I wouldn't mind if he was one. I don't know what's going to happen next, especially in regards with those dragons from outer space, but with our dragon defending the interests of our world, I think we have much reason for hope." **

* * *

Emmett watched over Jasper's shoulder as he tested the game on the best computer available to them. Jasper had been forced to reload from an earlier save because the ship had been attacked by pirates after it departed the Sumerian city and suffered heavy personal and material losses. He wasn't guarding the ship at the moment either but he flew the dragon ahead along its intended path to clear the way.

"I don't know," he mused as he glided the dragon around an island which looked especially picturesque. "The interface for resource management is easy enough to use but I'm not sure how the players are going to feel about the change of tone. It's one thing for a simulator of a dragon to gain some classical RPG elements with auxiliary boots on the ground and quite another to put elements of strategy in there."

"This was foreshadowed in the prologue part plenty enough," argued Emmett. "It was always our intention for the dragon to become a shaper of societies and if the engine allows me to program such game mechanics in there, why shouldn't we take advantage of that?"

"Well, it's better than putting it in a dialog option, I'll give you that."

"Easier for me too. And more useful for the players, I guess."

Truth to be told, it wasn't such a new concept. Jasper had seen games which belonged to one genre and added elements of another. Let's say, an action game where a player had to tend to his home base between missions. He couldn't name a game where the mechanics were done to his satisfaction though.

"Besides," joined them Alice. "The dragon is more powerful than anything around at this point. Adding more stuff for players to do is the only way of preventing them from getting bored."

"I totally agree with that," replied Jasper. "That's why we introduced personal stories of his followers. To keep the game relatable and the player invested."

"That's actually what worries me more than introducing new game mechanics," admitted Emmett. "We're abandoning that and focusing on the world instead - as was foreshadowed in the prologue. Osith is the last story character of the game. Afterwards, it's all just generic units like in some kind of a strategy."

"Yes, I see your point," conceded Jasper. "But as we agreed, this was foreshadowed in the prologue. In the long run, the dragon didn't come to that world to make close friends and watch their personal lives - he's there to help the entire world. So, it only makes sense that we are abandoning these personal pre-scripted stories and focusing on the world itself. Besides, it's only the last segment."

"Which might turn out rather long depending on how well a player does and how well has he done up to that point."

Bella and Edward returned shortly afterwards. They rehashed the matter briefly. Edward had known what Emmett had created (after all, he had made a few tweaks in the engine for that purpose). Still, he was quite pleased when he saw it on his own eyes. He had to admit, the new Emmett was way smarter than the old one. Alas, they couldn't say that their approach (to implementation) was novel. A game called Operation Flashpoint had offered a fully programmable environment as well and they weren't first either.

After a while, Carlisle reminded them that there were more pressing concerns to address. They discussed their plan.

One of the raised questions was whether four of them being changed was enough. They all agreed that they didn't really need to turn any more of them. Besides, turning others would take time and some tasks required ordinary humans anyway.

Another lead them back to the game. They had planned to release it as soon as possible to remove the main motivation why are people trying to kill them. However, it seemed that they were beyond that point now, they had become too dangerous. Moreover, the game wasn't dubbed yet. Carlisle and Esme had done some provisional voice-acting for Syward and Hylda but they weren't sure whether they wanted to use that. Carlisle and Bella had contacted some students but they couldn't go meet them in the current situation and they didn't want to do it remotely.

In the end, they uploaded the project to SourceForge, just in case. The source code of the engine was versioned as 1.0.0 and the campaign files as 0.8.0. The game was playable already, the save files were going to be compatible with the final release, and the lack of voice-acting wasn't going to matter much until Syward showed up. Players could experiment with the game in the meantime and perhaps try to create some content of their own.

They packed everything they needed for their operation and headed for Seattle.


	9. Nerds Strike Back

Nerds Strike Back

Esme and Alice in disguise entered the visitor center in the company's HQ campus. They had booked tour tickets under false names and were able to claim them without a problem.

Slinking away from the group unnoticed was somewhat more difficult. In the movies they had seen, it was always easy - a supporting character joins a tour and then simply steals away, just like that. In reality, tour guides are usually determined not to let anyone get lost during the tour and they warn visitors not to wander off when they see them doing so.

Luckily, a perfect distraction provided itself soon enough. There was a nerd hidden among the visitors. Shortly into the tour, he tore his sweatshirt off in a middle of a big hall, revealing his Linux T-shirt with a penguin. He started shouting at the top of his lungs "Linux rulezzzzzzzzz!" When the security tried to escort him away, he grabbed a chair and started smashing windows while yelling "Windows suck!"

Esme and Alice got out of sight. They took their jackets off under which they wore the company's polo-shirts. They also had got false name tags used by the employees.

They had triangulated the signal from the tracker before its battery went out so they knew where they were going. They found an empty meeting room in a building above it. There were Ethernet sockets under the table. They plugged their notebook in and just like that, they were connected to the local network. Just like Kevin Mitnick wrote in his "The Art of Deception" and many others before him, merely making something unaccessible from outside didn't make it truly secure.

Their work was done soon enough. They left the campus and walked to a rendezvous spot where Carlisle picked them up in a car. They left the city.

* * *

A goblin is sweeping floor in front of the dragon's vault. Suddenly, a loud metallic click sounds from the vault door. The goblin freezes. He knows what it means but he still can't believe that he's the one to see it - the only one.

The heavy door opens and the dragon emerges. The goblin goes down on one knee and bows his head. He still clutches his broom which looks rather comical.

Not knowing whether it's safe to talk to the goblin mentally, the dragon makes a sound as if he was clearing his throat. The goblin raises his head and addresses him as "milord" and stammers some kind of a greeting. The dragon has a feeling that his speech problems are caused solely by his awe. He clears his throat again.

"I'll notify my superiors," says the goblin, finally managing to say a proper sentence. The dragon was right - he is a native speaker of the human language.

The dragon looks around when he's alone again. The most immediate area is roughly the same as before - there has been no further excavations. That makes sense, they probably didn't wish to disturb him. However, it's much neater than he remembers and it's well lit at the moment. And when he looks into one of the corridors, he sees that it has been extended. His human friends and their descendants have been busy.

A man arrives. He's clearly as agitated as the goblin but he holds himself together better. He tells the dragon that food and water are on the way and that heads of departments have been summoned. The dragon doesn't ask for details at the moment, partly because no one around seems to be eager to get on the receiving end of his mental voice.

A live sheep is lead to him. The animal is crazy with fear so the dragon stuns it with his mind. He washes the snack down by a barrel of water.

The headmaster of their magical academy arrives first. He tells the dragon that he can speak to him if he wishes. The dragon has no immediate requests so they just talk about recent history, the school, and magical research.

As expected, the dragon's meddling in the psyche of future rulers in the area wasn't without consequences. There was no war between them nor did they become weak. A few decades after the dragon went to sleep, the whole region was invaded by horse-riding raiders from far west. Thanks to their unity, the rulers managed to repel the attack. The dragon has ambivalent feelings about that. What if the invasion was meant to make a huge gash in these lands? What if it was meant to undermine people's faith in the monarchy's capability to defend them?

The dragon is glad to hear that the school of magic is doing well - it's Osith's legacy and he's sure that she would be proud. All in all, there's not much to tell in this regard. Most of the students are old Syward's descendants but there are a few outsiders as well.

The part the old wizard is most anxious to talk about are their discoveries. There were two of them.

One was made by an archaeological expedition researching an ancient civilization. That is, ancient from human perspective - it was still around when the dragon hatched. There they discovered that their government employed wizards who wielded a power of divination which allowed them to find, learn, discover, and see things in past, present, and possibly future. Unfortunately, they managed to find only a few fragments of texts explaining this area of magic. No one was able to make any progress with this so it's up to the dragon.

The other discovery was made by one of the professors. It was almost by accident and resulted in an actual accident which killed the researcher. It concerned an area of magic dealing with time and space and could be theoretically used for teleportation. Once again, the rest is up to the dragon. He doesn't think that teleporting something as big as him will be economical but he can see how it can be convenient for humans. And that is just one example of practical application of this area of magic.

As the dragon considers all the areas of magic available (or soon to be available) to him, he also has a thought that it would be interesting to try to combine them in the future.

The rest of the leadership of the organization arrives. There's a chief economist, a man in charge of vampire hunting, a director of non-magical research, and a chief of the navy (who is also in charge of long range expeditions, cartography, and discoveries). The biggest surprise is a goblin in their midst who represents goblins and deals with matters which do not belong directly under one of the other departments. This position used to be filled by a human but it seems that goblins has grown smart and civilized enough to represent themselves. In addition, there's a chairman who coordinates all the others. All in all, it's a setup similar to what the dragon was used to but bigger.

The dragon asks for a report on vampires first. He's told that all vampires in this part of the world have been found and destroyed. Only one other vampire has ventured into the kingdom itself and was promptly dealt with. Quite a few more have been hunted down in long range expeditions. At the moment, they are unable to find more. This means that there are either none left in range or they are suspecting something and hiding. The good thing is that a dormant vampire is unable to wake up on its own according to what they know about them. The dragon can try his own hand in tracking them down. A team of veteran vampire hunters is prepared to aid him in this. It's up to the dragon whether he wishes to divert resources to training more of them.

The goblin reservation is still in place but the goblins there are no longer hunter-gatherers, they have become an agrarian society (though they don't have that much land to farm on). Their territory has been cut into three parts by two big roads connecting the kingdom and the duchy. Both countries have interest in keeping the reservation around to prevent smuggling - the goblins have the right to detain anybody (and impound their cargo) crossing their area outside of the approved roads with customs offices on both sides. Goblins living among humans are treated as foreigners - if they have a passport given to them by local authorities, they can move around freely.

The director of research has a special surprise for the dragon but not a pleasant one. His assistants role in a strange metal object. The director shows him a bowl of some kind of a black powder and explains that it's a substance brought there by the invaders. After the war, local craftsmen found an interesting use for it. The dragon probes the substance and the object and immediately knows its purpose - it's a canon. The director tells him that according to their tests, getting hit by a cannonball would be as healthy for him as for a human to get hit by a stone. In other words, he's far from invulnerable. Of course, the currently used cannons can't be aimed at a flying target so they are less dangerous to him than ballistae were the last time. However, it's a sign of things to come.

The main topic is brought up by the chairman and the chief of navy. According to them, they have run out of space in this part of the world and, as the population grows denser, the dragon and his lair are in ever greater danger of being discovered. The same can be said about their school of magic and their whole organization.

"However, there might be a solution," says the naval chief. "According to some travelers and scholars, the world is round. Is that correct?"

The dragon nods.

"They also claim that if one sailed far enough to the east, he could reach another landmass, previously undiscovered by humankind."

Or reach the west coast of their own continent, thinks the dragon. However, that would be improbable given the projected size of the world.

"Alas, our civilization doesn't posses means to make such a voyage. Maybe we could reach the place, if somebody mapped out the way there. And that's where you come in, should you decided to undertake this project."

"You wish to colonize this hypothetical place."

"That's the idea, yes," confirms the chairman. "And build a new base of operations there. Of course, such an adventure won't be for an old man like me, even if it happens during my lifetime."

"What if there are sentient beings living there? Other humanoids, let's say, or even people or goblins."

"Than we'll rely on your ability to find an unpopulated area and on your peacemaking abilities."

In following days, the dragon takes a look around the region. When he first arrived to the area, it was almost deserted. Then he saw it populate and now it's populated quite densely.

The forest where he hatched and the desert where his meteorite fell isn't far away so he flies there. The forest has been replaced by fields. The desert isn't as big as he thought it was. There's a saltpeter mine there. No goblins.

This time is different than the last two. There's no drama or crisis to resolve, no people to get attached to, and no stories to become part of. On the other hand, his feeling of attachment to the planet is as strong as ever and without any distractions, he can feel it clearer than before. He realizes that his actions in next century or two will set the course of this world for next millennium. Fortunately, his actions since the time he met Syward have given him, his followers, and the world around quite a good position.

He decides to crack the two new areas of magic open first. That's a simple and straightforward decision at a first glance. Armed with new magic, he can search for vampires more effectively and teleport human and goblin assistants to him. In praxis, crafting truly useful spell will take extra time after finishing the basic research. Then again, human wizards might have a chance of discovering some spells even without his assistance.

After researching details of the economical and political situation, he makes plans for the organization and leaves the heads of departments with their orders. That way, the time spent by magical research won't be wasted entirely. Then he and some human assistants get to work.

During next decade, a few of the department heads retire and the dragon has to pick their replacements. Other than that, there are no issues requiring his immediate attention but he does keep track of messages and reports coming his way.

When they are done, the dragon starts taking care of the accumulated business. While he was researching magic, the head of vampire hunters reported that their spies discovered a mention of what they believed was a vampire in annals of a city far away - farther away than the place where the dragon cultists were. They are quite certain that this vampire is not one of those destroyed by them already. The trace was old and cold even before the dragon woke up but he decides to pursue it. He does so without support of any usable spells from the two new schools of magic but he sees no reason not to do it the old way while he can.

He picks a small team - a wizard and two goblins. It's not much but it will allow him to travel faster. The goblins, as expected, are both awed and fearful about sitting on the dragon but it isn't the first time their kind ridden on him actually - he has flown to such mission before but never so far away.

When they reach the city, the dragon decides to be straightforward and not to worry about being detected by the vampire. His reasoning is that the creature must be hibernating in a sarcophagus even if it's still there. This begs a question: If all vampires are hibernating, how do they expect to reawaken? Is there some kind of a secret cult which is going to do that? That seems unlikely, their spies would have found some trace of it by now. The dragon probes the underground of the city and confirms that there's nothing there.

They discuss what should be their next move. The wizard is convinced that the creature must have moved in a direction away from the kingdom - their spies would find out about it otherwise. The dragon agrees and sends him to the city.

The wizard doesn't know the local language but that's no problem with the dragon whispering in his ear. He buys two maps - a modern one and a historical one from the time when the vampire passed through. After examining them, they come to a conclusion that regardless of what was the creature's final destination, there was only one city where it could have stopped along the way and as it is, the city still stands today.

They fly there and the wizard is sent in once again. They have enough gold with them so he hires a young scholar to help him. The dragon spends next few weeks experimenting with divination magic but doesn't get far in such a short time.

They find only one little mention which can be attributed to a vampire. A series of strange murders and one count of a discovery of a dying man struck by a strange disease. The dragon assumes that the vampire attempted to turn someone and was interrupted. Luckily, the subject was incinerated.

Seeing that they are on the right track, they continue. And that is where the search ends in a rather anticlimactic but hardly unexpected fashion. There are only three cities where the vampire could have possibly continued - two still standing and one in ruins. Beyond those is an ocean.

The dragon can't laugh like humans do but if he could, he would laugh cynically. Their quarry has ran out of space to hide in - just like he himself can no longer hide here. Thankfully, he has wings and his followers have got a naval fleet.

They go to the ruined city because that's an option which doesn't cost them anything to rule out. As it is however, that's where they find the vampire. It's hard to tell whether the dragon's probe stirred him on some level but it hardly matters. The two goblins are sent in and after some navigating of underground tunnels and excavation, they reach the sarcophagus.

They chop off and burn the beast's limbs but leave the rest. The dragon has a special plan for this specimen. He believes that a specialized divination spell could be tailored just for these monsters. Moreover, an antidote against their spores (or an inoculation) could be developed by the research department.

After returning, the dragon resolves all other issues on his agenda. As he does, the feeling of "claustrophobia" is reinforced. What used to feel like a virtually infinite land when he was a hatchling seems quite small now. That's probably because he has grown big.

A few more years of the dragon's time is dedicated to magical research but then it becomes unwise to delay their exodus any longer. They have some knowledge of how winds and currents work in seas near the coast but it won't be enough for a trans-ocean voyage. The dragon does additional research and estimates on which latitude they should sail on their way there and on which one on their way back. The question is whether the dragon should fly all the way over the ocean on his own or whether he should be accompanied by ships. They decide for the latter.

Three special ships are built and the dragon flies to the blue horizon ahead of them. Through their captains, he guides them safely from island to island. If he wasn't there, such a voyage would be nigh impossible. That's good - it means that no people have done it before. Like he said at the very beginning, he doesn't wish to run into people who have reached the place first.

During their voyage, the dragon remains in contact with the people back home. Additional ships are dispatched to some of the more interesting islands.

They see many amazing plants and creatures on their way but no sentient life. This trend holds all the way to a new continent. The dragon finds that almost too good to be true when the ships drop their anchors.

The dragon takes a look around before he lets a small landing party to follow him. They search the area. It's not a bad place but the dragon believes he can find better in time. Still, the expedition makes a temporary camp.

As the dragon flies over the new land, he can't but be reminded of how the world looked when he hatched. This is even better though - utterly pristine and primordial. It won't stay that way for long because the dragon is here to bring civilization.

He finds a good place for a permanent settlement. Not on the coast. It's a short distance inland but easily reachable by a wide river.

The ships move there and a settlement is built. Most of the pioneers remain there and the expedition's leader becomes a mayor. His ship remains as well but the other two sail back loaded with crates of dried fruit and samples of fauna and flora. There aren't that many goblins in the new settlement so placement of their district doesn't receive much long-term planning.

The dragon decides to explore some more before following the ships. He still doesn't find any indigenous sentient life. He catches up with the ships shortly before they reach the old continent.

Preparations for what's soon going to become the greatest logistical operation conducted by private business begin. The trick is to avoid attention of the authorities. While people of these lands don't need a permission of their lord to move, the dragon is quite sure that the crown would frown on somebody founding a new country somewhere else using its subjects. The same can be said about leaders of neighboring countries. This is a price for helping to keep their lands strong.

Surprisingly, the head of the goblin department comes up with a nice cover for their operation. They tell the authorities that they have found an inhospitable and otherwise useless island which is big enough to accommodate all the goblins in the reservation. The island actually exists but is quite nice and similar to what the land looked like when goblins first arrived here. The dragon likes that because it solves two problems at once. There are some people in both neighboring countries who would say that the goblin reservation is important for maintaining political stability but far more believe that their presence hinders development of trade between them. The dragon isn't sure what kind of an effect is their absence going to have in the long run but according to all he knows, war is extremely improbable.

As first ships with reservation goblins set off for the island, three more are sent to the new continent while the dragon makes preparations for the whole operation. There are more goblins than the last time but all of them are assimilated. The dragon has no intention of letting their wild cousins set foot on the continent where they would be able to expand without limits. As for human passengers, most of them are denizens of the formerly neutral land around the dragon's lair. No one can say that the people of old Syward's grandparents don't get around.

It's time for more exploration. The dragon finishes mapping the coastline of the entire continent. It's bigger than the old one. Still no sign of any sentient life.

The settlement progresses nicely but the dragon isn't sure whether the separation of humans and goblins was done wisely. They are separated now all right but the problem is that the currently used area is going to become a core of a city in future and what is separated now in two halves is going to become intertwined. The dragon decides to make settlements dedicated to either one or the other species in future. He isn't sure how well is a solely goblin town going to fare (the only other precedent is the reservation) but it's simpler than dealing with problems stemming from close coexistence.

Another trip back and forth. Because the colony isn't self-sufficient yet, trade is needed to cover the costs. However, direct one would attract attention so a kind of a mercantile triangle is formed: from the new continent to the southern lands (where vampires came from), from there to their old home, and from there to the colony.

Further exploration finally confirms it: There are no natives anywhere on the continent. All that dragon finds is wilderness filled with all sorts of interesting plants and animals. He also maps natural resources when he's at it.

One of them is quite interesting - a special kind of a tree growing in equatorial areas in swamps contaminated by seawater. Probing the trees reveals that their wood is incredibly hard and resilient to salt water. The trees could be used for construction of ships.

It's on his third trip on which he turns his attention to nearby islands on the other side of the continent. He spots something under water which looks like very interesting and unusual coral reefs. He dives down there and encounters a strange creature soon. It looks like some kind of a fish with barely noticeable humanoid features. Intrigued, he follows it. Too late he realizes that the coral reefs look so strange because they are semi-cultivated and that the creatures are actually sentient.

Horrified that he has just exposed himself to yet another sentient species, he flees. The sea-people follow him to a beach. It seems they are amphibian and can leave water for a short period of time.

He wants to fly away when he notices that they are trying to reach him telepathically. It seems that's how they communicate under water. He responds and tells them not to mind him, that he's just a dragon. Of course, they have no reference to the word so he just sends the idea of the sound. After they get over the effect of being touched by his mind, their leader opens his mouth and says "Dagon". They start swaying their bodies and chant and hum.

The dragon would bang his head against a rock if he thought that it would help. Not only has he exposed himself again but it seems that he has started yet another cult. He looks around, as if expecting the dragon from space to appear and chastise him. He also thinks that it would be nice to have a power which would allow him to start again from an earlier point in time but then he concludes that exploiting such a power in this particular case would be lame.

He consults with his people about what should be done. They agree to ice the matter for the moment and hope that the creatures will forget about it. The dragon suspects that they hope in vain.

Their operation starts attracting vague suspicion of authorities. Not that anyone imagines that they have found a new continent to settle but people and goblins are disappearing and ships are going and coming. The dragon's spying reveals that some think that slave trade is involved while others believe that they are building their own naval trade base on an island somewhere.

Using bribes, the dragon's abilities and magic, and their own spies and wizards, they manage to sabotage any investigations for now. A committee is sent to the goblin island but there's nothing to hide there. They note that the island isn't as unsuitable for human settlement as they were led to believe but that hardly matters at this point. They leave quickly again before the goblins start demonstrating how unwelcome any visitors are.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, the dragon searches every bit of the old continent using specialized magic for finding vampires. He finds one last vampire in a land far west. He has to admit that he wouldn't have found it without the magic.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the first to make the discovery. There are locals at the site. The place has been turned into a primitive laboratory. It seems that they are examining the creature. That's bad and potentially dangerous. The dragon has to be uncompromising on this one.

Using teleportation magic, the dragon gets a team to his position. It takes a while but it's faster than making two trips to get them there on his back. Two wizards, a few infiltrators and soldiers, and several goblins.

The dragon reads the mind of the supervisor of the wannabe researchers just before they attack. They don't belong to the local authorities but to an underground criminal organization. Not too dissimilar to their own organization in its secrecy but very different in its purpose and morals. That's good, it means gloves off.

They approach the site at night, knocking out one guard and killing the others. They spare no one in the subsequent attack and burn the vampire, any extracted samples, any other materials, and the whole place down. The wizards and the dragon fabricate the sole survivor's memories afterwards. When he's going to wake up, he's going to believe that the creature awoken, broke free, and killed everybody. He's going to tell his superiors that setting the place on fire was the only way to contain the catastrophe.

With that out of the way, the dragon's work on the old continent is finished. All he needs to focus on now is the colonization process.

Years pass. Many of the organization's lands and other unmovable assets are sold. The employees (who aren't in the know already) are given a choice: remain with a new owner or relocate with their whole family and receive their own land as a bonus. A rather suspicious offer but the organization makes an equal risk telling them even that much.

The magical academy is moved but a small branch remains behind to search for gifted people. They collapse all access tunnels to the underground complex housing the lair and HQ save one. With the power of teleportation, physical access isn't so critical anyway. They are also prepared to rig the rest of the complex with kegs of black powder but the situation doesn't call for doing that just yet.

Leaders of countries with access to sea decide that they shouldn't stay that far behind private business in the area of naval exploration. The dragon makes a new directive for their fleet prohibiting any records concerning the way to the new continent to be put on paper. The crews can use only standard nautical charts with captains committing everything else to memory. The organization also sets security measures in place to protect the captains and all other officers who know enough - should the authorities arrest them to interrogate them, the dragon will learn soon enough.

Their fleet is no longer dependent on the harbors they used to utilize for long term storage of ships because they have got their very own ones at the new continent and they can rent short term docking for their ships in southern lands. Still, it's good to limit the presence of the ships in their old home to minimum so they construct a secret "way station" inside a small barren rock not far from the coast.

First ships other than their own start sailing across the ocean - or at least attempt to. In the beginning, they turn back when they reach half of their range. Many of them don't make it back because of unfavorable winds.

There's a talk of pressing the goblins into letting them use their island as a resupply stop. However, it's not that far along the way and another island is discovered (again) a little further away soon. That's good. The goblins are well entrenched on their island and a war with them wouldn't improve relations between the two peoples.

Later, a new tactic is tried - sailing straight ahead until reaching something. They aren't that many volunteers for such an adventure. The dragon watches these ships as they meet their doom one by one. Some perish in storms, others run out of water, and some fall to mutiny. This only feeds the resentment of those who believe that the dragon's organization has found a safe way across the ocean.

Landlocked countries watch their seafaring neighbors with envy in turn. So far, having access to sea mostly meant an easy trade route to southern lands. With a possibility of new discoveries, the stakes are much higher.

There's a new queen in the kingdom. Not too young, but quite inexperienced. With proper manipulation, the kingdom could be turned against its former allies. And that is where the dilemma comes. Playing the landlocked nations against the coastal ones would solve their problem. However, is it worth the cost?

In the end, a middle way is chosen. Their associates in the court are approached and it's hinted to them that their shipping company could work to prevent the coastal countries from obtaining any oversees riches and thus maintain a political balance in the region. Not many people know about the link between this mysterious shipping company and the vanishing economical empire originally created by Osbert but those who do realize that all that wealth had to go somewhere which would also explain the rumors about them being able to cross the ocean.

In older times, the crown wouldn't suffer a private subject exploiting a political situation. However, the current queen just wants to maintain peace and avoid degradation of diplomatic relations. The monarchy doesn't have as much power as it used to anyway. The kingdom gives a silent approval to naval activities of the dragon's organization without expecting much in return. This frees the hands of the organization in dealing with any greedy naval powers. Also, they stop disposing of their assets in the kingdom. It's good to retain some presence on the old continent after all.

Within a year, all of this proves to be a good investment when a ship of theirs is detained in a port in the duchy. Their informant network has failed to learn about this in advance which was bound to happen one day. The crew decides not to fight or try to flee which is wise in the current situation. The ship is searched for any secret nautical charts but none are found. The captain and his officers are questioned but they aren't taken away. A combination of the dragon's magic and pressure from other trading companies secure the ship's release. The incident is a dire warning for the organization.

A decade passes. The duchy and other coastal countries continue to fail in crossing the ocean for the time being. The dragon's help enabled his ships to get to the new continent decades ahead of their time but it's clear that this head start won't last for much longer. Because of this and because they don't want the naval powers to claim all the islands in the ocean for themselves, the dragon starts sabotaging search for them in certain key places. While he can't turn an entire island invisible, he can cause a lookout to miss it.

The continued lack of success increases the hostility of the naval powers against the mysterious ocean-crossing fleet. Increasingly bigger efforts are given to secure the ships from this threat. This includes spreading rumors that the rumor of the successful traversal of the ocean was just a myth created by the shipping company to make themselves look bigger than they were.

Development of the new nation faces challenges of its own. For example, the goblins, while being more responsible than their wild kin, still breed way faster than human colonists. It's not such a problem in cities which provide some limits to expansion of their population but it's quite visible in countryside where the only hindrance to founding a new farm is the need to clear a forest. There are different ways to approach questions such as this one and none of them are inherently good or bad - it's a matter of creating a strategy which will be best for the situation in the rest of the world.

Another decision, which won't affect the new nation itself but is of not so insignificant practical value to the dragon and the organization, is placement of the lair, the HQ, and other key elements of the organization. A wise decision would be to think for a long term and place the lair somewhere where it won't be reached by civilization. However, that's what they did the last time and civilization still reached the place - thanks to themselves! And if they do choose that option, should the HQ be with the lair or separate? Hawing it in a middle of nowhere carried its own cons. And what about the magical academy? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Speaking of those, the dragon and his people need to think about how many of them should be done by citizens of their new nation. Not just about themselves, that's already a well established freedom, but about the nation itself. In other words, how should the new continent look from a political standpoint? Democracy and republic are terms known to this world but neither of those are practiced anywhere at this point. And if they choose to go that way, who shall be eligible to vote? It's clear to the dragon that not every human born on the continent is ready for such a responsibility. With goblins, it's even worse - wast majority of them are unprepared to be given such power. However, the dragon would like to give the best of them a chance to earn it. Above all, he wants the rules to be universal for all citizens of the country (humans and goblins alike).

Another decade passes. The organization's relations with their old home is quite good and their remaining assets there flourish. It's similar with other inland countries but their properties there are kept at minimum. On the other hand, they have gotten rid of anything they owned in coastal countries ages ago and their relations with them have deteriorated to a point when their ships can no longer show up in their ports.

Moreover, seamanship and construction of ships have improved to a level which could actually allow those countries to cross the ocean. The dragon can deter them for a while longer but they should prepare for hostilities. There are three important things that need to be done.

One is crafting of good warships. That is where those hardy trees the dragon has found earlier come in. They don't grow on the old continent so it's quite an advantage.

Second, they need to create a military. So far, the role was fulfilled by the organization itself. For obvious reasons, they want to stay in the shadows. Moreover, they wouldn't be enough and the citizens deserve a chance to defend their new homeland.

Third, they need to turn their attention back towards the old continent and start claiming the islands which used to serve as their resupply stations during the early stages of colonization (starting from their own side of the ocean, of course). It's way better than to let their potential enemies claim them first.

As for those few key islands which the dragon has prevented anybody from discovering and which would raise quite a few questions if they were discovered and there was no apparent explanation for the earlier lack of success and which are more on the other side of the ocean, they leak their locations to certain pirates operating around the coast of the southern lands (on the old continent). Moreover, the dragon causes a few ships to crash there.

Another thing is a possibility of the continent being invaded from west. Truth to be told, the dragon has not found the time to make a full circle around the planet yet but he calculates that if he flew in that direction, he would reach the western side of the old continent. He decides to leave the west coast unprotected for now and use the fish people in a worst case scenario.

There are two things of significance left: declaration of independence and finalization of the constitution. Both are mostly formal representations of earlier decisions. Strangely enough, the former won't be published outside of the new continent for some time because thanks to the dragon, their very existence is still a secret.

Two more decades pass before that secrecy is finally broken. By that time, the pirates in the way are routed and the coastal countries control islands all the way to the defensive line of the new country. The southern lands have claimed a few islands as well and the goblin one has been left mostly alone. There's some tension between the countries about who gets to claim which island but that quickly dissipates when they encounter the new foe.

Publishing of the declaration of independence is met with shock and disbelief in the old continent, even in the kingdom. The declaration is vague about the existence and especially the location of the new continent and many people still believe that there isn't any, that it's just a bunch of islands. The duchy and neighboring coastal countries declare war immediately, thinking that they are facing a bunch of pirates controlling a handful of islands. The kingdom remains neutral - years of the organization's political scheming pays off. The new country opens an embassy there.

The southern lands traditionally take no part in politics of their northern neighbors. A convenient side effect of the whole situation is that the southern lands are cut off from the new continent as well - they can't sail directly from their location because of the winds so the only way leads through a war zone. However, this feels more like an excuse and it seems they wouldn't try anyway. They do raise their tariffs though in response to the situation.

All in all, the war is uneventful thanks to all the preparation done to this point. The dragon and his people are as prepared as they can possibly be. All vampires are destroyed, magical research yielded all the fruit it could, the dragon himself is as perfect as he could be at his age, both the organization and their nation is strong and united, their fleet superior to anything the old continent can throw at them, and the strongest country on the old continent, the kingdom, does not support the war. Still, the dragon does his best both in planning and direct involvement to minimize the causalities and shorten the war.

In the end, their associates in the court make sure that the kingdom uses its diplomatic power to get the sides to a negotiating table. Another factor that aides the end of the war is a political fall of the duke. The (former) duchy is taken over by a kind of a mercantile regime which is more interested in trading with the new nation rather than warring with it.

A similar trend can be observed in other countries with the exception of the kingdom. Traditional form of governance are being replaced by various other ones. It's not always clear whether it's a change for the better but progress is a process of trial and error.

And that is all the dragon can do for now. He can fly around for a little while longer if he wishes but whatever happens after he gets back to his lair will be another story.

Before that happens though, he needs to investigate something. He feels something like a pull leading him to the equatorial area of the new continent. When he's exactly at the equator, he realizes that the feeling is actually coming from the sky. The camera shoots high above him, or rather far away, where the black dragon hovers on a geosynchronous orbit.

He is way out of the younger dragon's range but that doesn't seem to be any problem for the space one. He makes a contact. Just like before, they don't use any words. Unlike before, the younger dragon is a more equal participant of the exchange.

The older dragon has never left and was sleeping on the moon for this whole time. He acknowledges that the young one has succeeded in keeping himself hidden. He comments on the level of meddling with the affairs of the world but this time around, he doesn't say whether that's bad or good. The young one doesn't hide any details of what has occurred and he isn't sure whether it would make any difference anyway.

Next, he makes a few prognoses but nothing that needed to be spelled out. He thinks that the absence of the goblin reservation might indirectly cause regional instability in the future. He warns that while all vampires have been destroyed, samples of the disease which created them might still be hidden in places all around the world so they might return in future, perhaps even in some other form. Lastly, he comments that as this world grows increasingly complex, it will become virtually impossible for the dragon to control the flow of its history.

Unlike the last time, the young dragon manages to ask his questions. How has his egg ended up on this planet? Who laid it? Where is his mother? What is the purpose of his presence here? What is this strange connection he has got with this world?

He expects a half-answer at best and is surprised when the other one answers in full. The entire mystery is laid bare to him and doesn't seem so mysterious any longer.

Their kind is the oldest existing sentient life in the galaxy. The oldest existing - not the oldest. They have found remains of many civilizations which is hardly a surprise in a galaxy of sufficient age and size. However, on a short term and local area scale, planets suitable for life are not so abundant. Only some actually develop at least a single-cell life naturally. It's extremely rare for such a life to evolve into a civilization.

The problem is that these occurrences are so much separated by time and distance that no two civilizations almost ever come into contact. Dragons found proof of such a thing happening only once in the past and the species involved were so mindbogglingly different that they ended up destroying each other. Dragons themselves are the only known exception thanks to their unique nature.

Unwilling to accept a universe in which they would be alone for most of the time, they decided to start doing what humans would call "playing gods". Their action was two-fold. First, they seeded any suitable planets with simple bacterial life. That life grows in all sorts of strange shapes but at least all of them share the same principles.

The second part is more delicate. Whenever an intelligent life evolves sophisticated enough, a guardian (or rather a shepherd in this case) is sent. Typically, being sophisticated enough means discovering magic but this isn't always applicable. The guardian is always sent as an egg to be hatched only after landing on the planet. This sounds risky but so far, no hatchling has ever gotten itself killed.

As for the strange link with the planet, that's a purely artificial magical construct triggered by the egg entering the atmosphere. It's useful for giving a young hatchling a sense of belonging and later on, it helps with the dragon's task. In time, any dragon with enough proficiency in magic can deactivate the effect but there's no reason to do it until their flock becomes a space-faring civilisation.

As for the young dragon's family, he does have parents, of course, and even siblings. He was isolated from them on purpose because, once again, they wanted this world to be his home and the people living on it his family. He has an older brother whose world has reached space already. The world is near on a galactic scale but as good as utterly unreachable at this point. Some of the other siblings have been deployed and hatched already, others are in eggs still. In fact, it's time for the space dragon to go to one of those younger worlds now.

In the end, he emphasizes a warning that next few centuries will be critical. Music, which was barely noticeable before starts getting louder. Then the dragon starts leaving the orbit but the camera veers away conveniently so it isn't actually shown how he intends to travel between stars. Instead, it shows a shot of the planet, just like in the beginning and the music tracks goes into an epic final theme.

A logo with the name of the game appears but no credits yet. Instead, a text appears claiming that it wouldn't be possible to crate the game without the Open Source community. Under is a challenge asking the players whether they've got what it takes to create sequels followed by links to the SourceForge profile of the project and to an external site set up for coordinating sequels. A little prompt box asking the player whether he wants to keep playing appears.

Afterwards, the dragon can go back to his people and tell them about the visit. He decides to limit the revelation to the fact that his mission here is one of peace. He doesn't have the heart to go further than that and spoil the mystery for them but he promises that he will share more next time he wakes up. Then he goes in his lair, the heavy gate slums shut, and credits roll in.

* * *

Edward reached a small side entrance without getting spotted by a camera. It served as an emergency fire exit and by their estimate, it was one of the easier access routes.

The door could be opened from outside but it was secured by an electronic lock. Yes, his superhuman strength allowed him to simply walk through the door but that would have raised an alarm. He could have tried hacking the lock but it wasn't his area of expertise so there would still have been a danger of triggering an alarm. Instead, he simply rapped on the door lightly and put on a ski-mask.

"Hi, what have you needed to..." said the poor sucker who opened the door before he realized that person outside is wearing a mask. Yes, you shouldn't do things just because an e-mail says so, even if you think it's from a colleague of yours.

Edward knocked him out and stowed him away. He proceeded deeper into the building. There were more cameras on the way but it wasn't a problem for him to leap through blind spots.

After a while, he found a security room. There was a lone guard there, watching the monitors. Edward pulled out a small plastic bottle of laxative and grinned evilly. When the guard was looking away, Edward used his superhuman speed to put the laxative in his coffee, just like he had seen in a certain movie. Shortly after the guard finished his coffee, he ran away to a nearest lavatory.

Edward studied camera feeds and floor-plans for a while before he used his radio. "Rosalie, get ready at the cargo entrance. Watch out for the camera."

The cargo entrance was meant for vehicles. The signal of their bug had stopped on the other side. Jasper had commented that maybe it was a trap, just like in movies, but Edward and Bella were convinced that their enemy was way too dumb for that.

Most of the gate was bellow the ground level and there was a gently sloping road leading down to it. A camera was watching the road but not the gate itself. Rosalie leaped over its vision cone, used her hands and feet to absorb the impact to avoid slamming into the building, and dropped down through the camera's blind area. Edward started to open the gate, just enough for Rosalie to roll in, and closed it again.

Rosalie found the van which had delivered the drones. There was an old scent of the drones inside. The (inactive) bug was still attached so she removed it, crushed it, and put the remains in a small plastic bag.

"OK, so far so good," said Edward again. "I can't get you to the bottom level from here but I think it won't be necessary."

Edward navigated her through her floor to an emergency staircase. There was a freight elevator but it required a PIN. He was able to open the door to the emergency staircase but not the one at the bottom. Sure, Rosalie could tear them open but that would trigger an alarm.

There were cameras on the way, one of which couldn't be avoided by any means. They didn't want to leave any record of their passage. Falsifying of small part of the record wasn't necessary, he simply restarted the subsystem and Rosalie slipped through while it was rebooting. Edward was sure that no one was going to find it suspicions, even under closer scrutiny which was to be expected.

Rosalie reached an office where an employee was finishing up tweaks on next version of the drone software. She watched him for a minute and saw him upload a commit without having to type his login and password anywhere. That was good.

She pulled out a bottle of laxative and started to sneak to the programmer. Only when she almost reached him did she see that he didn't have a cup of coffee but a can of soda. As she was contemplating how was she going to put the laxative there without him noticing, he stopped coding, stretched, and did a little merry-go-round on his chair. Rosalie managed to put the laxative away before he saw it.

"Excuse me, may I help you?" he asked after he got over a slight shock of noticing somebody standing behind you.

Rosalie decided that there was only one way how to get out of the situation - she had to seduce the guy. She reached in her pocket and put on thick glasses which, in her opinion, made her look smarter and thus irresistible. She parted the sides of her parka to make the Linux T-shirt underneath well visible, puffed her chest out to make the picture of the penguin taut, raised her hand in a gesture of Vulcan greeting, and said in a quick, nerdy voice "Hi, what's your favorite distro of Linux?"

A flash of revulsion swept over the employee's face. "Is this some kind of a joke my pals are playing on me?"

Rosalie wasn't going to give so easily. "What do you think is better, KDE or Gnome?"

"OK, that's enough, Spock. I don't know who you are but I'll let you know that I'm not a nerd, I've got a life, and I'm even married. Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that you aren't supposed to be here. So, unless you want me to notify security, you'll say that Linux sucks and get out of here."

Anger bubbled in Rosalie's blood (metaphorically speaking). How dare he to try to violate her that way? Before he could as much as blink, she snapped his neck.

First things first, she put an USB flash drive into the computer, replaced all the code with Edward's, and committed it. She wondered whether there was going to be some warning somewhere that all the code was changed but Edward doubted it. She flagged the release as ready for building. Only then did she contact Edward.

"Dammit, what are we going to do with him?" he cursed. "This is exactly what we wanted to avoid!"

"If I place his body conveniently, they might say that he was killed by one of the drones."

"Let's hope so."

The build was progressing without a hitch on a server. Rosalie would prefer to wait till the end but Edward was sure that they could leave. In a short while, they were outside, heading to join Bella and Emmett who were preparing the final showdown which they hoped was going to be great but expected to be utterly anticlimactic.

At the lowest level of the building, technicians saw that the new release was ready. They loaded it on USB sticks of their own and started to install it on all the drones.


	10. Nerdy Forever

Nerdy Forever

The CEO of the company was looking at the SourceForge profile of the game. He was a big, fat, bald, loud man.

"How the hell have they managed to pull this off?" he boomed.

"I guess they are good developers," quipped the head of the games division.

The CEO threw a chair across the room in a bout of anger and ranted "I always say that we need better developers. Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers! Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers."

Another employee, who was in charge of the drone division, barged into the room then.

"Boss! It's a catastrophe!" he exclaimed. "The drones went crazy and are tearing everything apart!"

"Jeez! Don't you see that we have ears here?!" admonished him the CEO. "Besides, what have I told you about plausible deniability?"

"I don't think it matters much now."

The other man didn't know what they were talking about but then he saw from a window a crowd of people running away. He didn't wait for anything and ran to a nearest elevator.

"Coward!" yelled the CEO and threw another chair.

"Sir, we need to evacuate."

"No, we need to go there and contain it!"

"But how? They aren't responding to orders."

The CEO pushed a secret button and a secret panel in a wall slid open. There was a massive power armor hidden there. In fact, it was more like a big robot with space inside for a pilot. Only, the front part of its armor was missing to make space for a mouse, a keyboard, and a monitor. It definitely looked like... well, like an opening in the otherwise impenetrable armor.

"Help me get in there," ordered the CEO.

Bella was observing the whole thing from a ventilation shaft. She contacted Emmett.

"Change of plans," she told him. "Don't cut the rope, just loose a few screws a little. He's bringing in more weight that we have anticipated."

When the CEO got inside the robot and turned its computer on, he had to wait for quite a while for the OS to boot. While he was waiting, he reminisced bitterly how Steve Jobs convinced one of the developers working on the Macintosh project to speed the machine's startup up.

"Can I go now?" asked the head of the drone division.

"No, I need you to open the doors for me."

The CEO made a few mouse-clicks and the robot started moving. The head of the division opened the door of the office but when the CEO tried to walk out, the robot's head caught on top of the doorway.

"Sir, the robot is too big to pass through," informed the head.

The CEO leaned out from his cockpit and grunted something. He made some more mouse-clicks and the robot waved its hand, clearing the way.

"Call the elevator!" he ordered when they got there.

"Are you sure it will be able to carry you?"

"Hey, I'm dieting, just so you know. And it's going to carry both of us just fine."

"You want me to come with you?"

"It's your division."

Bella, Edward, Emmett, and Rosalie were waiting on top of the elevator already. Once their enemies were inside and the elevator got moving, they nodded at each other and jumped on spot. That was the last straw. The cabin tore off and plummeted down.

The CEO was cushioned by his armor so he survived, though he was banged up badly. More importantly, the monitor still worked even with being damaged partially. However, the other man broke his neck in the fall.

The CEO clambered out of the elevator and stumbled into a dark basement. Strange, he had never seen this floor. Pressing the bottom button always took the elevator to a floor above this one.

He switched the robot's lights on and took a look around. Among the dust, he spotted four penguins. The rational part of his brain was telling him that they were only pictures on T-shirts. Still, he couldn't see heads of the wearers very well because they were wearing black ski-masks so it looked quite scary.

"I have four words for you," yelled the CEO. "I. Love. This. Company!"

He started clicking his mouse while yelling "Yeah!"

When it was over, Emmett remarked, "Well, he died bravely."

"If you can say that about getting a heart attack from getting overexcited," sneered Bella.

They left the compound and observed the situation unfold from afar. The drones started to self-destruct at a specific time, just like they had been programmed.

Jasper picked them up afterwards and they drove out of the city as quietly as they had arrived.

* * *

Representatives of big search engines, video-sharing platforms, social media, and such assembled in an Illuminati-style meeting.

"Well, gentlemen, this will effectively hamstring them," proclaimed a representative of a big search engine. "Leaking the technology to them was a gamble but it blew in their faces more spectacularly than we have ever hoped. Their founder is trying to mitigate the calamity but at this moment, it's only a question of time. They will have to join tour fold. I dare say that they'll even join the Linux foundation one day. And with their HQ destroyed, they may even relocate to Silicon Valley where we are strong. Then, there will be no one left to oppose us! Hahahahahahaha!"

"What about the Linux community?" asked somebody. "Shouldn't we rethink throwing our support behind them? The recently deceased CEO said that his company will develop a Unix better than Linux. Maybe we should go this way."

"Don't worry," retorted somebody else. "I'm sure it won't be that difficult to find some dirt on Linus Torvalds. When the time comes, we'll make him our pawn."

"Exactly," agreed the first speaker. "We'll infiltrate Linux, make it look cool, then we'll take over. Hahahahahahaha!"

They discussed the reaction of public to the events in the HQ and how were they going to suppress any mention of the drones and how to control the overall narrative regarding the matter.

* * *

Edward and Bella ended up just like they had started - in a basement. However, this workplace looked diametrically different - it was a proper computer lab. They weren't working on a video game either. That is, Bella wasn't. At the moment, Edward was writing a post on a SourceForge forum of the sequel of their game. He explained that he hadn't written all the code personally but he reviewed it and committed it. He was willing to keep maintaining it if necessary but he wasn't going to implement any new big features and the moment somebody else touched something, it was theirs.

"By the way, have you heard about Jasper?" he uttered when he was done.

"Huh?" replied Bella without taking her eyes of her screen. "You mean about him being a consultant for the story of the sequel?"

The community was planning to make it a trilogy. Part two about the modern history of the dragon's world and part three in space. To be honest, Bella and Edward weren't sure how was the engine going to handle that.

"No, he's making an independent animated movie based on his vision of the canonical story of the game. Alice and Rosalie are working with him and Emmett agreed to help them as needed."

Bella murmured something absentmindedly and then started discussing their current project with Edward.

Before they taught their mortal enemy a lesson, they supported a certain company which had created a popular search engine. Afterwards, they realized that if this company was going to be the next big thing in the world of IT, they should undertake steps to support balance and to prevent it from obtaining a monopoly in the field. When one of Carlisle's acquaintances contacted them and told them about a project aiming to become an alternative, they didn't hesitate and joined in.

"By the way, Alice told me something disturbing about Emmett and Rosalie," divulged Edward after a while.

That got Bella's attention. She turned in her chair and waited for him to elaborate.

"They venture into public sometimes, pretending to be together. You know, like on a date. In a restaurant, for example."

Bella was horror-struck.

"And because this transformation of ours gave us these utterly useless good looks, they garner attention of people around usually. Only then they start behaving and talking normally. About changes in the code of the upcoming release of the core, personality disorders, and such."

Bella snickered despited her revulsion. Then the later won out.

"That's disgusting. I admit, I enjoy a good trolling as anybody else but this is dangerously close to socializing."

"Amen."

Edward turned back to his screen but then he turned back to Bella and asked, "By the way, would you like to take a break and play a few rounds of 0verkill?"

"Sure thing!"

* * *

The dragon observes the geeks as they geek out in their basement. He isn't there in person, of course - he uses a small bird to watch them through a basement window.

All in all, the whole situation has resolved itself quite cleanly. He suspected for a long time that the vampire venom was still out there somewhere. Now that "they" have leaked it to a company which made a terrible blunder with it, he can track it back to its source.

Even greater gain are the geeks themselves and their peculiar reaction to the venom. Old vampires were either feral or creepy and inhuman (the latter put the latter down usually). New ones are just feral, which is why the company adopted the practice of lobotomizing them and putting microchips in their heads. Now these four friends (and the dragon suspects that the remaining four would turn out equally well) are... well, creepy and inhuman once again but in a different way which can be considered as not necessarily bad by some and as hilarious to a certain degree by others.

This unexpected turn of events is the reason why the message which his agents have laid seeds of in their minds was relayed more strongly than he expected. It's part of his long-term plan of subliminal propaganda which his people conduct in case his existence gets accidentally revealed.

The dragon breaks the connection and takes off. Just as he was warned, the world has become more complicated than ever. It's probably so because there are more people than ever. But, as always, he remains optimistic.


End file.
